Doubts
by Helen Pattskyn
Summary: AU, COMPLETE! This picks up right where Xero Shane's Love and Reason left off, because as the Bard also said, "The course of True Love never runs smooth." Romance, friendship and a little hurt comfort mostly comfort .
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:**

First off, a HUGE thank you to everybody who has been reading and responding to my work. THANK YOU!!!! Secondly, I apologize for starting a new one when I've got Stars hanging (although the good news for people reading that is that I've got about a quarter of the next chapter written on that one, so hopefully some time next week I'll be back to it as well.) Third, I'm not one hundred percent certain exactly where this is going or how long it's going to be before I call it done and move on to the next bit, but this seemed to warrent its own story, rather than being stuck as part of More Short Stories (where I almost put it.) Ok, lastly, I can't seem to get the bugs out of the formatting, so pretty please ignore any formatting glitches. Grr.... I'll try later to sort it out, but right now I have to go and make my own version of Jack's Galaxy Famous Chili for my potluck tonight! heheheheh

This picks up right where **Love and Reason** (by Xero Shane) left off. I'm starting out on a much lower note than the ending of **Love and Reason**, but Vance was actually right about one thing, Ziva has a lot of healing to do…hopefully by now you all know I'm a sucker for a happy ending. You probably don't have to read **Love and Reason** to get the gist of what's going on here at the beginning, but it would certainly help (besides, it's a great story.)

Extra special huge great big thank you's go to **Xero Shane**, for writing the story that spawned this one and to **Kitsa** for bouncing ideas around with me and for coming up with the notion that Jack needed to poach Ziva away from the people who clearly don't appreciate her anyway.

* * *

**DOUBT**

_"There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt.  
Doubt separates people.  
It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations.  
It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills."_

Buddha

* * *

**Chapter One**

**March 10, 2010**

_Is love a tender thing?  
It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn._

William Shakespeare (from _Romeo and Juliet)_

* * *

Unable to sleep, former Mossad officer Ziva David sat in the semidarkness of the plane's cabin, observing her fellow passengers, most of whom weren't having any difficulty sleeping at all on the pre-dawn flight. One woman was knitting… a man a few rows up was reading a newspaper. She could hear the rustle of the pages as he turned them. Other than that, all she heard was snoring. Ziva closed her eyes; she didn't knit and she didn't feel like reading and besides, the only thing she had with her was a copy of Tim's new book, the continuing adventures of LJ Tibbs and his team. The last thing she needed to see in print was the blossoming love affair between "Tommy" and "Lisa" who had apparently finally declared their true feelings for one another and were set to get married despite complications brought on by an invasion from outer space.

A few years ago that might have sounded like science fiction, but not any more. Aliens were becoming an accepted part of life… she could not believe that they weren't all bad, no matter what Abby claimed. Still, Abby was the one friend she felt she had left; maybe she was the one friend she had at all, if one counted friends as those you could turn to when there was no one else you could trust. Not that Gibbs wasn't a trusted friend, truly he was and she couldn't have asked for a better friend than him—but she couldn't stay with him any longer.

Tony did not love her. He couldn't. He might have said that he did…he might even think it, believe it, but she knew it couldn't possibly be true. It wasn't that she felt herself unlovable, she was, she knew she was—she sounded defensive to herself, even inside her own head. She had a lot to offer to someone…but not to someone like Tony.

Tony was like…he was like an actor in one of those movies he loved so much. Only she was nothing like one of the leading ladies. Leading ladies did not know how to kill a man using only her bare hands, they did not know how to disarm a bomb, let alone construct one if the occasion called for it. Leading ladies were quiet, charming, sophisticated…not that someone who was all of those things would know what to do with Anthony DiNozzo, she mused, almost smiling. Tony was not quiet or sophisticated at all…no, that wasn't true, either. He could be quiet…he was quiet. Underneath all his bluster there was a truly remarkable man…

Her fingers brushed against her lips where he'd kissed her—or maybe she had kissed him, she wasn't sure any more who had initiated it, not but twelve hours ago. She could almost still smell his aftershave (which was ridiculous, she told herself. She had showered, changed. No trace of him lingered behind.)

Tony had never called Gibbs last night. He hadn't gotten the chance. They had gone out to dinner—it had been lovely, really. Pizza, wine, then back to his apartment, a movie…one thing led to another and then…

She had left without saying good bye, either to Tony or their former boss. It was better this way, she told herself. Again. No matter how many times she told herself that, it did not ease the guilt she felt over slinking out in the middle of the night or the tightening sensation in her gut whenever she thought about Tony waking up alone after having gone to sleep curled up around her. It was just that laying there in the dark, unable to sleep, she had thought about so many things, things she almost wished she hadn't thought about—things Tony certainly hadn't been thinking about when he decided to quit is job like that. And for what? Her? Why had he done that?

Deep down (or perhaps not so deep down) she knew she did love him, she had, she must have done for some time…but she was afraid. She did not want to hurt him and to say that she had a less than spectacular track record with love would be an understatement. Maybe it wasn't her fault, she reckoned, maybe it was the way she'd been raised, her father…she cringed at the thought of him. After everything they had been though, everything the whole world had seen last year, and he was still willing to treat her as expendable… _just another asset to be used, discarded…_

_Besides, Tony has enough to worry about, he does not need me right now, _she added to herself, almost as an afterthought. He had to figure out what he was going to do for a job, because if she knew Tony—and she did—she doubted he had anything set aside for a raining day. _Rainy day_…yes, that was it, a rainy day, not a raining day. He had to sort out his life and he didn't need be worrying about, too. After all, without the status her position as Mossad liaison gave her, without a job with NCIS, she just another Israeli citizen visiting the US. She could not stay, she couldn't just move there, there were mountains of paperwork and somehow she suspected that she would get no help at all from Leon Vance if she decided to seek US citizenship. She expected even worse out of her own father.

But there was one person she knew—or at least suspected—who would not be hindered by 'red tape.'

Ironically (or perhaps not, Ziva couldn't decide) when her flight landed a few hours later at Cardiff International Airport, the rain was coming down hard…

………………………………………………………………..

"What do you mean, gone?" DiNozzo gaped at his former boss. Gibbs had just told him he'd woken up to find little more than a note in the guest room, a room that Ziva had tidied up so neatly, he'd hardly have known she'd been there at all.

Gibbs shrugged and poured the younger man a cup of coffee. "She left this," he handed over the note; he'd been carrying it tucked into his jean's pocket, although he didn't know why. He supposed maybe it was because he was worried about her. Ziva might be trying to hide it, but the incident in Somalia was taking a toll on her and he knew it. He'd figured she would take some time, sort herself out… he knew she'd be all right, she just hadn't expected her to up and vanish in the middle of the night. He'd been more worried until he finally got a phone call, albeit not from Ziva herself.

Tony ignored the coffee, though it smelled better than usual and that was saying something, Gibbs had a knack for making a good cup of coffee. But coffee wasn't what he was interested in. Tony unfolded the note, recognizing Ziva's efficient, distinctly un-girly handwriting.

_Gibbs,_

_I did not tell you everything that happened yesterday. I am sorry. I need to sort some things out and here is no longer a good place to do that. Thank you for letting me stay with you. Thank you for everything. For believing in me. For Somalia. _

_Ziva_

"That's it?" Tony asked him, unwilling to believe she was gone. "She didn't say where she was going?"

"Nope." Which didn't mean he didn't know, but that wasn't what Tony had asked. Harkness had given him a call to tell him that the former Mossad officer had arrived in Cardiff safe and sound, turning up on Tim and Abby's doorstep just a couple of hours ago, and to try to piece together himself what had actually happened in D.C. because Ziva, of course, wasn't talking. Gibbs hadn't been able to tell him much at the time, but he was beginning to get a clearer picture of what might have happened, or at least who had happened. "Wanna tell me about it, DiNozzo?" he asked, not making any special effort to sound casual.

"I think I screwed up, Boss," the younger man admitted, not looking up from the note. His coffee. He didn't remember putting the one down and picking the other up, he just wished it was something a lot stronger than coffee in his cup. "I told her I loved her."

If Gibbs thought anything of that, he didn't let it show. "Do you?" was all he asked.

Tony stalled a moment, sipping his coffee. He knew the answer, but did he want to admit it…? Did he have a choice? "Yeah. I do. I have. For a lot longer…for a while," he fumbled. He wasn't sure exactly when it had started, he just knew that dancing with her at Tim and Abby's wedding, he'd known how much he missed her. More than missed her. He'd felt more than a little jealous when Jones or Jones-Harkness or whatever his name really was, Timmy's boss's husband or partner or whatever, had asked her to dance. It hadn't helped to find out that the perfect little Welshman apparently pitched for both teams.

The sound of Gibbs' voice jarred him out of his misery, but the words didn't help any:

"If that's how you feel, you didn't screw up."

He looked up, startled. "But she—she ran away because of me, didn't she, Boss?" it was only barely a question. It was his fault. If he'd just kept his big fat mouth shut…

Gibbs shook his head. "She—" he wanted to say that she hadn't run away, but he didn't like lying, even when it was the thing to do to spare someone else's feelings. He doubted Tony would believe a lie right now anyway, he was too busy beating himself up, taking the blame over things that weren't his fault. "Ziva needs to put space between her and… the things she needs to 'clear her head' about," he settled for the most diplomatic description of the situation he could think of. "Give her time, Tony," he rested a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "She'll be back."

"What if you're wrong? What if she doesn't come back?" he asked, unaware of just how despondent he sounded. _What if I never see her again…?_ Suddenly he wasn't interested in the coffee any more. Ziva had the skill-set necessary to vanish. If she had really run away from him, he knew he never would see her again.

Gibbs just shook his head some more. "Come on. I could use a hand in the basement," he motioned towards the basement door. Downstairs his sixth boat lay waiting to be worked on.

Numbly, Tony followed him down the steps. He didn't have anything better to do anyway. No job…no girl… _what did you really think was going to happen, DiNozzo?_ he berated himself. _That she was going to leap into your arms like some movie heroine and the two of you would ride off into the sunset together? _That would have implied that he was a hero, something he knew he wasn't. He was just an ordinary guy with an extraordinary ability to screw things up…

* * *

I love you whether or not you love me  
I love you even if you think I don't  
Sometimes I find you doubt my love for you  
But I don't mind  
Why should I mind, Why should I mind

What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway  
What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway

Can anybody love anyone so much that they will never fear  
Never worry never be sad  
The answer is they cannot love this much nobody can  
This is why I don't mind you doubting

What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway  
What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway

And maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be  
The door always must be left unlocked  
To love when circumstance may lead someone away from you  
And not to spend the time just doubting

What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway

_Howard Jones_


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:**

Wow! Great big huge thank yous to everybody for the lovely reviews and fantastic response this has gotten!

I should have a chapter of Stars up later this week. It's almost done. With the chapter that I'm working on, I think the last kinks have been worked out and we can get back to wedding fun!

To **KristinOhman**, I suppose I should apologize for getting you hooked into something as crazy as the Torchwood Universe ;-)

A special thank you to **Xero Shane** who's been keeping me posted on the current season of NCIS (I usually watch in re-runs, week nights are just to harried around here and I always forget to program the DVR.) Anyway, she's right, last week's episode is too good to ignore…but that's for the next chapter. In the meantime…

* * *

**Chapter Two**

_Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes…_

Peter F. Drucker

* * *

Jack smiled his gratitude when a certain, irresistibly handsome, young Welshman set a cup of strong coffee on his desk, the handle turned exactly to seven o'clock. It was only after meeting Ianto's biological father that he saw it was a family trait.

"Thank you," he settled back in his chair, pulling his gaze away from the window that looked out onto the rest of the Hub. Some days he liked the view, others he hated it…or more to the point, he hated the lack of privacy even if he and Ianto had never spent half the amount of time shagging up there as Owen used to accuse them of… he sighed. He still missed Harper… _but I hope I never stop,_ he thought. He never wanted to forget any of them.

"You looked like you could use it," the younger man perched himself on the edge of his desk, cradling his own mug in his hands. It wasn't just that the last thing Jack had intended was for Abby to bring her former co-worker in with her today. In point of fact, when Ziva David appeared on her doorstep, he'd suggested that Abby take the day off. And she might have done, but about an hour after the former Mossad officer arrived in Cardiff, so did a Vespiform space ship.

There had only been a single occupant, badly injured, who was currently in the medical bay. With Bobby. And Gil Grissom. _That_ wasn't Jack's idea, either, but Sara had a point, he was an expert, at least when it came to terrestrial insects (not that all insects most people considered terrestrial were necessarily so, but that was definitely a conversation for another day.) Besides, Gil had been with Sara on their way to look at some wedding hall way out in the middle of the country when the ship came down, less than a mile from the road. Sara called it in, discovered that it wasn't an aircraft, at least not one that Gwen could find registered anywhere.

Since Sara was right there (never mind that so was Gil), and despite Jack's insistence that he could be there in twenty minutes, she'd gone to check it out because of course the former Las Vegas CSI always kept a field kit in her car… and she was right, twenty minutes could make all the difference in the world if it was anything 'hinky'. Which thankfully it didn't seem to be.

Jack drank his coffee. Ianto stood then; the older man groaned with pleasure when his partner began rubbing his shoulders. His head slumped down. "God, I love you," he murmured into his arms.

The Welshman chuckled, "You just love my hands. And my coffee."

"Nope. The suit," the older man teased, glancing sideways at him.

His husband gave over a wry expression. "I suppose I'm just glad you love me at all," he said in a tone too sincere.

Jack frowned up at him. "Ianto—"

"I'm only teasing, Cariad," he assured him. "I know you love me. I love you too." _With all my heart._

"I'm not always sure why," he confided.

"Me either," the other continued to tease him, if only gently. "But I don't suppose it matters any more. I'm here to stay." He leant forward and pressed a soft kiss to the older man's cheek; even with Alice and Steven becoming an increasing part of their lives, with Shane a solid part of Jack's life, he knew his partner's deepest fears involved losing him. There was nothing either of them could do against the inevitable, someday he would die because unlike Jack, he wasn't immortal, _but in the meantime, I won't ever leave you,_ he promised them both silently.

He didn't know what it was that had made Alice's mother run scared the way she had. She had known going in all the things he had…maybe even more. Maybe that explained why sometimes getting Jack to talk about is past was so difficult, he'd tried that once before, trusted somebody, let them in… he kissed him again. It didn't matter. When he'd promised he was in it for the long haul, he'd meant it.

……………………………………………………….

Ziva couldn't help but notice Tim and Abby's boss kissing his husband through the large glass window that opened the Captain's office up to the rest of the Hub, including the lab. Unlike the lab in D.C., Abby's lab at the Torchwood base wasn't sequestered away from the rest of the team. She was as much a part of the bullpen as the rest of her team, she just had a much larger area in which to work, which afforded her a modicum of privacy, if she chose to have it. At the moment, that was exactly what she was doing, especially when she'd pressed a cup of 'white' tea into Ziva's hands earlier. White having nothing to do with the leaves, but how much milk and sugar Abbs had added… the Israeli had to admit that perhaps the British, who Abby had learnt her tea making from, had a point. Tea was better in an emotional crisis than coffee. Not that she was having a crisis. She wasn't. She was just… she drank her tea. She didn't know what she was doing or why of all the places she might have chosen to go, she had chosen Cardiff. Except that she couldn't help but feel a certain sense of security sitting in the middle of the Torchwood base—not that she'd actually expected to be invited into work with Abby. Still, Torchwood was as responsible for her rescue as Gibbs…Tony… she drank more tea.

"I suppose it is a good thing Torchwood does not have a Rule Number Twelve," she mused to her former colleague, setting her empty teacup down on the table in front of her. She was still in awe of the facility. The first time she had been here, not even a month ago, she had been in too rough of shape to really appreciate it—although even then it was hard not to be awed by a living dinosaur.

Above her head, Myfanwy was stretching her wings, circling the main are of the Hub, even though typically (according to Abby) she was tucked up into her alcove during the day. Perhaps, Ziva thought, it was all the excitement, the alien that had been brought in less than an hour ago. She had seen little of the 'patient' herself, but she had heard how the creature's ship crash landed in a field outside the city…she just wondered what they were going to do with it. Not that it was her concern. _Unless it is a scout for another hostile species… _in which case it still wasn't really her concern, she just couldn't help but wonder if by tomorrow her fears and uncertainties wouldn't seem trivial in the wake of another alien invasion.

"As much as Jack likes to break rules," Abby answered, looking up from her keyboard, "I think even he figures there's no point in having a Rule Number Twelve." A soft beep behind her alerted her that the computer was done running their alien patient's blood work. "I have to run this down to Bobby," she gave an apologetic look to her guest. She knew she could have stayed home and just let the medic run his own tests, he was more than qualified, but now that she had her own lab again, she was a bit more possessive of her equipment. Besides, it wasn't as if Ziva had never seen the Hub before, Jack had brought her here himself. And anyway, as she'd told her boss when he tried to object, Ziva wasn't a civilian, she was Ziva! Who was she really going to tell, anyway—and what would she say? Half of Cardiff knew about Torchwood any more and Jack knew it.

"I will be fine. Thank you, Abby," the Israeli assured her. She wasn't sure she would really be fine, but she could certainly sit tight and stay out of trouble for the next ten minutes.

She hadn't intended to tell Abby or Tim, or anyone for that matter, what had really happened between her and Tony, why she was in Cardiff unannounced and looking like something the dog—no, the cat—had dragged in (although she didn't see the difference in whether or not it was a dog or a cat. She looked and felt like shit.) She'd actually even managed to hold out for almost thirty whole seconds before caving and telling Tim and Abby everything, even the details she had sworn she would never share with any living soul, because why in the world she had allowed herself to _sleep_ with Tony…with _**Tony**_?! McGee had been very generous in the way he said nothing about it.

She didn't need him to tell her it had been a mistake. Ziva knew it was. She had known in the moment she might—would—regret sleeping with Tony. But there had been wine and then his arms around her, making her feel warm, secure…it had been the first time since her rescue that she'd felt so safe and when he kissed her… In the wake of everything that had happened it had felt so good to be so thoroughly wanted by somebody—not just any somebody, somebody she really wanted to want her. Somebody she wanted to want in return. Somebody she could love…

A few years ago she would have presumed it to be little more than another sexual conquest on his part—and maybe little more than one for her as well. Life would be so much simpler if that were the case. But it wasn't. So she was in Cardiff. She was in Cardiff because she had nowhere else to go. She couldn't go home. She wasn't even sure where home was any more. It wasn't Tel Aviv, it wasn't Washington D.C. Where did that leave her…?

"Penny for your thoughts—sorry," Jack apologized when she jumped. He hadn't meant to startle her. (He carefully filed away for future reference just how wide-eyed she'd looked just then, too.)

"No. I am the one who is sorry," she told him. She was well aware that her presence was only barely being tolerated by the American Captain. Just the same, she gave over a warm smile as she accepted the cup of coffee he was holding out to her.

"It's safe," he added. "Ianto made it."

She chuckled softly despite the tumult of emotions waging war inside her. She had not had the Captain's coffee previously, but she had heard some of the others comparing it to all manner of unsavoury things. "I am sure yours cannot be as bad as they say," she made the attempt at polite small talk.

He laughed. "I survived just fine before I hired him…but I guess I've got an unfair advantage," he shrugged, leaning against the table in front of her chair.

She frowned…nodded. He was immortal. She had seen him take a bullet to the chest and then get back up again only a few minutes later. He had not been wearing a vest. And Gibbs had confirmed the story. Her former boss did not know how or why, but Harkness could not die, it was an accepted fact.

"A lot of people freak out," the Captain told her honestly, seeming to be trying to gauge her response.

Ziva just nodded. She could imagine…no, truthfully, she could _**not**_ imagine what it must be like to work for a man like Jack Harkness. Finding out that he and Ducky had once been lovers didn't necessarily help any, given that that had been when Dr Mallard was a much younger man, serving in the War with Harkness.

"What about old age?" she queried when he sat down on the table he'd been leaning against; she was in a chair, respectable people did not sit on tables. But she didn't think that Abby was at all exaggerating when she said that Jack Harkness liked to break the rules, probably at every chance he got. Then again, his very existence seemed to break the laws of nature itself, so what difference did it make if he sat on the corner of a table instead of pulling up one of the stools from the other work bench?

"I found a grey hair the other week," he told her with a merry smile; Ziva could see beneath it, however.

"Even old age cannot kill you, then?"

"Nope."

"And your children?"

"I'll bury them eventually, just like I buried the children I had before them." His candour surprised them both.

"It must be difficult," she voiced.

He nodded, taking a healthy sip of his own coffee. Someday he would bury all of them…

"How do you do it? How do you… go on?"

"You mean how do I go on living?" he queried, his grin returning. "I don't have a choice. I didn't ask for this, it just…happened."

Ziva nodded again, deciding against prying further. When he smiled, it seemed, he was deflecting away from his emotions, or at least away from what she imagined must not be pleasant emotions. She wondered how long he'd been alive. She wondered a lot of things and not just about Harkness. Many of the events of the last few years had taken a toll on her and the fact that nobody had any answers only made it worse.

"The truth is that I carry on by finding something to live for, a reason to keep going," Jack said at length, having gotten some sense of what was really bothering the Israeli woman. She kept fiddling with the Star of David on the chain around her neck, although he doubted she was conscious of it.

"Your husband," she opined of his statement, his reason to keep living.

"Him. Our kids. This job. This planet. This is where it all started out for the human race," he drained the last of the contents of his mug.

"You are—?"

"Human, but not from around here," he told her the truth again. If he really regretted it later, there was always retcon…although Abby wouldn't be happy with him if he did. She might even kill him…or convince Janet to go hide out in his wardrobe, and she might kill him… _or make such a mess that Ianto does… _"I understand you quit Mossad," he said, changing the subject.

"I…yes."

"Second thoughts?"

"About leaving Mossad? No. I have no second thoughts, Captain. I'm sure you are aware that Director David…" she broke eye contact. Her own father had set her up and she didn't know why, other than it must have furthered some pet project or another. "When I went to work as a liaison with NCIS seven years ago, I learned a lot of things, Captain Harkness. What it was to be a part of a team, to have friends, what a good leader is supposed to act like."

"Gibbs."

She nodded. "When I returned to Mossad last year, I—I no longer fit in. I no longer wanted to," she told him the truth, suddenly wondering what was taking Abby so long. It wasn't that Harkness made her uncomfortable, in fact he made her comfortable enough that she was being more forthcoming than usual. And that was definitely an uncomfortable feeling. She drained the last of the coffee from her mug; she had barely been conscious of drinking it. She noticed his was empty as well. "Can I get you a refill?" she asked in what she hoped was a friendly tone. Mostly she wanted to test to see how much liberty she really had.

"Sure. I'll walk with you—I wanted to go check on the patient anyway," he said to the speculative look she shot him. "I don't think you're going to get into any trouble between here and the coffee station…but I'll warn you now, if you mess with it, I cannot be held responsible for what Ianto does to you," he teased.

Ziva chuckled. She'd already picked up on the fact that the young Welshman was possessive of the coffee maker, although she didn't understand why. Still, everyone must have something that was special to them…her mind flickered back to Tony again, all those annoying little moments… "May I ask… about the…the patient?" she used his word.

Jack shrugged, "I'll know more when he's awake."

"He? You can tell its gender?"

He chuckled. "If there's one thing I know all about, Miss David, it's sex," he told her with raised brows and a lascivious smirk

Ziva found herself blushing—and had his aftershave suddenly become stronger? Still… "Is…he… hostile?" she asked in a cautious tone.

"A Vespiform? Nah. Not likely."

"A…a what?"

"Vespiform. Come on," he motioned her to follow him to the medical bay. "Hopefully they'll have some good news for us."

Blinking, Ziva followed him…


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:**

So again, thanks to **Xero Shane** for keeping me in the loop with regards to NCIS this season. I've tracked down a couple of episodes on Hulu… watching them, I guess I've warmed up to Vance just a little bit more. I still think he's a jerk, but I'm treating him with a wee bit more kindness than in the past… of course this version of Vance hasn't gotten the chance to know Gibbs, and I think that made a difference in cannon (I also finally got to touch on what I think his real problem was with Gibbs to begin with—he was threatened by Gibbs' teams loyalty.)

* * *

**Chapter Three**

"_Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.  
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."_

Marie Curie

_* * *_

"_He that is afraid of __bad luck__ will never know good__."_

Russian Proverb

* * *

Leon Vance shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was a firm believer that bad luck came in threes. The first of today's bad luck, a broken toothpick jabbing him on the inside of his cheek, had been a minor annoyance compared to the dead Marine fished out of the water off the coast of Tanzania by a couple of idiots (American idiots no less) on a shrimp boat. But still, there were worse ways to start a Thursday morning. On this particular Thursday morning, he'd had to deal with the fact that DiNozzo apparently wasn't bluffing, he'd really quit, he wasn't coming back. If he were, he would have been in hours ago begging for his job back. And Vance realized that he probably would have given it to him because even if he was a pain in the ass, the former Baltimore cop was a good agent. Not that anybody would catch Vance saying so aloud.

But not having DiNozzo around to annoy him wasn't the third piece of bad luck to strike in as many hours. No the third strike on this particular rainy Thursday morning in March came in the form of Mossad Officer Malachi Ben-Gidon, Ziva David's former supervisor, who was standing across from Leon Vance's desk, glowering. It wasn't so much the Israeli's dark expression that had Leon feeling at a loss, or even the man's wild accusations about NCIS 'holding Ziva hostage', it was what he had to say in response to the accusations.

"I'm afraid you've been misinformed," he answered the other man calmly, hoping to gain some kind of upper hand—or at least an even footing. "Miss David isn't here."

"It's _Officer_ David and what to you mean she isn't here?" the other corrected him and demanded in the same sentence.

His brows knit together. "She resigned from Mossad—"

"Her resignation has not been accepted."

Right. Leave it to Mossad, or at least Ziva's father, Mossad's director, to honestly believe that by simply denying a person's resignation they could prevent them from quitting. Although he supposed she could be charged with treason if she refused to return… a part of him almost regretted turning down her application to NCIS, but it didn't take a genius to see that Ziva was falling apart at the seams. Not that that had been the real reason… he gazed up at his visitor. "Is this the wrong time to point out that it was NCIS that rescued _Officer_ David from Somalia?" never mind that it hadn't quite exactly been a sanctioned operation—but Vance wasn't above taking the credit. Then again, maybe he _should_ sick Jack Harkness on Eli David. He'd only had the pleasure of a handful of phone calls with the Torchwood senior officer, however that was enough for him to know he didn't like the man. Harkness had a superiority complex that rivalled Leroy Jethro Gibbs' aura of superiority.

"Where is she?" Bin-Giddon's angry words pulled him from his private thoughts.

"I honestly have no idea," Vance told him the truth. "I wasn't aware I was supposed to be babysitting," he added in a snide tone that caused the other to glower all the more. _Good,_ he thought.

"When did you see her last?"

"Yesterday morning. She left after being turned down for a job as a full time NCIS agent."

Bin-Gidon muttered something under his breath; although he wasn't speaking English, the sentiment didn't require translation to be fully understood. "Where is Agent DiNozzo?" he wanted to know.

"You mean _former_ Agent DiNozzo?" Vance couldn't help the mixed feelings of satisfaction and regret he felt about losing Tony. But what was done was done. "I haven't seen him since yesterday, either. He quit."

"You seem to have a problem keeping a team together," Bin-Gidon said in a sharply cutting tone.

Vance refrained from comment. Truth was that he wasn't one hundred percent certain that the rest of Tony's team wouldn't be following on his heels by weeks' end, because just like Gibbs before him, DiNozzo seemed to garner loyalty in those under him. Vance didn't understand why—well, maybe of Gibbs, but DiNozzo? It was a wonder half the women in the building hadn't filed harassment suits against him.

What he really wanted to know, however, was if Mossad's sudden interest in Ziva David (after all, she'd been in the States for over a month after having been rescued from Somalia and this was the first he'd heard from the Israelis) had anything at all to do with the body sitting in Dr Palmer's lab… "We're not done here," he said as Bin-Gidon turned to leave.

"What do you mean?"

"Something that happened on the Damocles resulted in the death of a United States Marine. I'd like some answers about that."

"How should I know anything about a dead American?" he said the last word as if it tasted like sour milk.

Leon Vance kept his expression bland. "I don't know. Why don't you sit down and tell me about it?"

Fifteen short minutes later when Bin-Giddon cut the interview short, Leon asked his secretary to get Gibbs on the phone. If anyone would know where Ziva and Tony were, it was their former boss.

Loyalty. He understood what the word meant, he just didn't understand why men like Gibbs and DiNozzo were able to command so much of it when he couldn't seem to be able to garner much at all…

………………………………………………………………………

Ziva gaped in at the huge wasp like creature on the exam table. It was conscious, but not restrained in any way. In fact, there seemed to be no precautions being taken whatsoever; next to the alien, Abby seemed to be holding its…well, she couldn't call it a hand exactly…but Jack seemed not the least bit concerned by Abby's proximity to the creature despite the fact that it was nearly as large as any of the humans in the room and she doubted that the stinger was for show. Neither Chase nor Grissom seemed ill at ease, either. Chase merely looked up from his clipboard as the two of them came down the stairs. (Gil Grissom seemed oblivious to the intrusion; he was too deeply engrossed in what he was studying something on the computer screen.)

"How's the patient?" the Captain queried in a jaunty tone, as took the last of the steps that led down into the medical bay. The new infirmary was considerably larger than the previous medical area, with separate exam areas and an autopsy room as well as a small, sterile surgery bay.

"Remarkable," Gil answered before Bobby had the chance, although he didn't look up from the screen for more than a brief second, glance at the Captain over the top of his reading glasses.

Jack grinned; as much as he hated exposing Gil to all of this (although he had to admit it was inevitable, even if the man had asked amazingly few questions after the 456 incident), there was also something gratifying about seeing just one person outside Torchwood who _wasn't _afraid of aliens, one person not automatically assuming that all aliens were like the Daleks and Cybermen.

"We haven't quite managed to communicate," Bobby told the Captain then, "but we've established that we're trying to help and he seems to be responding well to treatment." He set his clipboard down on the counter and leant against it, seemingly completely at ease with the alien. "As far as we've been able to tell, his injuries were mostly superficial—although he won't be flying anytime soon."

"So I see," Jack observed of the badly damaged wing. He smiled over at 'nurse' Abby. "Is there anything we can do about that?"

"I think so," she told him, giving the patient's…hand…and gentle squeeze. Some things were just universal, Abby had decided, like holding a sick person's hand…or…whatever. The Vespiform had let her close enough to touch him and he seemed to be taking comfort from the contact.

Ziva was far less convinced that it was a good idea to let anybody so close to something that appeared so dangerous as the 'Vespiform', but she tried not to let it show, trying to take her cues from the other humans in the room, trying to trust Harkness' judgment. Dr Chase seemed to be treating the creature like he had treated her, when he'd examined her after Somalia. He seemed to give the alien wasp as much regard as he might any human patient. (What she didn't realize was how pleased he was to be working with a live, cooperative, patient for a change. Before joining Torchwood, Bobby's speciality had been critical care; since joining Torchwood, most of his patients had been dead before they got to his table.)

"When you're up to it, we need to talk," said Jack to the wasp.

"Can it…he…understand us?" Ziva asked quietly.

"Probably," Bobby answered her.

"Internally, they're almost identical to _vespula vulgaris_—" Gil began, turning around to face the rest of the room at last.

"That's a common yellow jacket," Abby interjected, mostly for Ziva's benefit. Unlike Gibbs, Jack understood all manner of 'geek speak'. It had taken her a long time to get used to that. She would stop every few sentences and start to explain, only to have him cut her off, finishing the explanation for her (sometimes even better than her and _that_ was infuriating) before asking her if she could just get on with what she was saying and save the kindergarten lessons for little kids.

"It's almost as if they had a common ancestor," Gil went on, clearly still amazed and looking a bit like a kid who had been let loose in a candy shop with a pocket full of change to buy whatever he wanted.

Jack's smile deepened. "They do. Long story," he said quickly. When their guest was up to it, he could tell Gil as much—or as little—as he wanted to (and as much as he would prefer that to be on the 'little' side, if their guest was the chatty sort… he sighed. It really was inevitable, he told himself again. Abby was right, Gil was a part of their 'family' just as much as Rhys and Nerys.)

"You're familiar with the species?" the scientist asked him.

"They're from the Silfrax Galaxy—a long way away," he explained before anyone could ask. "They're not quite one of the 'ancient' species of the universe, but pretty close. In other words they've been around a long time. When I was a…" he hesitated. Right. When he'd been a Time Agent, he'd travelled to the Silfrax Galaxy a couple of times, but there were some things he really wasn't ready to divulge to Sara's fiancé—or Abby's friend. "I've had contact with the Vespiform before." He turned back to the patient, "You're in good hands, by the way," he told him in a sincere tone, although he didn't doubt that the Vespiform had figured that out already. If he hadn't, things would be a lot less calm. "When you're ready, I'd like to know what you were doing here. Earth is _still _only a Class Five planet."

The Vespiform buzzed at him, causing Ziva to jump, but Jack only chuckled as if he somehow understood what it was saying.

"Flirting with our guest already?" Ianto queried from over the banister. "Shouldn't you at least wait until visiting species are on the planet for five minute before start chatting them up?"

"I was just making conversation!" the Captain shot up a dark look—but the young Welshman could see the warmth in his partner's blue eyes. There was no doubting how much he loved him. Or that it was one hundred percent returned.

The younger man didn't miss a beat, however. "Like I said…" he replied in a dry tone before telling Jack that he had a phone call and making he exit once more.

"Yeah, that was my…mate," Jack supplied to their guest, who was giving him an inquisitive look. "But he makes up his cheekiness with by making hell of a cup of coffee," he added with a wry grin that garnered more buzzing out of the alien wasp. "Come on, Kids, let's let our friend here get some rest," his gaze took in both Abby and Ziva, although he doubted he was going to have to ask the latter twice to leave the room.

Abby gave the wasp a parting smile and followed Jack and Ziva back out of the medical bay.

"Is it always like this?" Ziva asked her friend quietly, even though it was just the two of them, heading towards the coffee station.

"Some days are way crazier," Abby assured her. "Others are totally boring. You never really know what's going to happen," but she was grinning, clearly indicating how much she loved her job.

They both heard Jack bellowing Ianto's name from his open office door. "I need you up here!" he shouted, when the young Welshman poked his head out of the kitchen.

"On my way, Sir," he said quietly in return, although only Ziva and Abby could hear him. Ianto poured two cups of coffee before heading up to the office.

"And some day we might even get an intercom," Abby grumbled half under her breath as he was leaving.

Ziva chuckled. Torchwood certainly had an interesting group dynamic…

Her good mood evaporated completely only a moment later, however, when Captain Harkness hollered down a second time, this time for she and Abby to join him in the office as well.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

_The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity._ Lord Byron

* * *

"Gibbs!" Abby squealed in delight when she saw that Jack had one of the computers in his office set up for a video conference and there was Gibbs on the other end, acting all technological and everything (or maybe Ianto had walked him through setting up the video call over the phone, their Welshman had the patience of a saint.) Her exuberance faded quickly when she noticed the twin grim looks on Jack's and Gibbs' faces. "What is it, what's wrong, what's happened?"

Ianto took her by the shoulders and guided her to one of the corner chairs; she still had a clear view of the monitor and Gibbs could see her as well, but she wasn't happy about being made to sit down, not when Ziva was still standing in front of the monitor. It was Ziva Gibbs was looking at, too, and he was looking very unhappy.

Abby looked up at the young Welshman, but his expression gave little away. She grabbed hold of his hand and wished that Timmy were there—he and Wendy were out checking on a rift spike near the university. Hopefully it was nothing…

"Vance got a visit from Malachi Bin-Giddon this morning," said Gibbs, although presumably this wasn't news to Jack and Ianto. "And Palmer's got the body of a dead Marine on his table."

"These two things are related, yes?" Ziva asked in a shaky tone, crossing her arms over her chest, not looking anyone directly in the eye. Obviously Gibbs believed that they were. She cast a sidelong glance at Abby's boss; Harkness appeared inclined to agree as well. He did not look at all happy, either. She swallowed nervously, suspecting what was coming.

"The Marine's body was found off the coast of Tanzania," Gibbs told her, "not too far from where the Damocles went down. His name was Staff Sergeant Daniel Cryer. Ring any bells?"

She opened her mouth to say no, but before she could answer, Gibbs shoved a picture of the Staff Sergeant up to the camera on his end. She wasn't sure how he had gotten a picture of the man from when he was alive (it looked like it was from his service record), but perhaps if Vance was seeking information, he would be predisposed to being more 'friendly' than usual with his former employees.

"I knew him as Daniel Shalev," she admitted. "He—we were on the Damocles together."

"But?" Gibbs asked, apparently having heard the hesitation in her voice.

"I knew that Shalev was not his real name," she answered softly, making eye contact with her former boss for the first time since stepping into the room. "If there is anything I learned from you it is that once a Marine, always a Marine."

"So you knew he was a Marine?" his tone was scathing.

"He was wearing his dog tags. He was not like the rest of the men on the ship." She was certain that it had not been Shalev—Cryer—who had betrayed them. Not that it mattered. He was dead.

"I think you'd better sit down give us the rest of it," Jack told her, in a tone only slightly less harsh than Gibbs'.

She gaped at him. "I cannot! I was on a mission for Mossad!" telling them anything about what she was doing on the Damocles would be tantamount to treason and both men knew it. She looked to Ianto hoping the quiet Welshman could talk some reason into at least his boss, his partner because he certainly seemed to be the most level headed person in the room. He did not appear to be willing to help her, however.

"Talk to me, Ziva," Gibbs' coaxed gently. "I want to help—we both do," he glanced in Jack's direction.

The Captain nodded. "But we can't help if we don't know what happened out there."

"Am I being accused of something?" she wanted to know.

Gibbs shrugged. "Maybe. I got the impression from Leon that maybe they think you're responsible for Cryer's death. We know he didn't drown, he was dead when the ship sank."

"I did not kill him!" She shut her mouth again almost as quickly as she had opened it to protest her innocence. Even if she had resigned from Mossad, she still could not divulge the details of a Mossad operation.

"Ziva," Gibbs began, "if you don't talk to us—"

"Gibbs!" Abby was back on her feet, her gaze darting from her former boss to her current boss and back again. "I know Jack doesn't know Ziva, but you do and you know better!" She scolded him. "She would never shoot anybody… well… you know what I mean!"

"All I know is that there's a dead Marine and a live Mossad Officer here in D.C. Which one do you think Vance is going to listen to?"

"I cannot," Ziva told them again.

"Ziva!" Abby turned on her next. "Who rescued you from Somalia? Mossad? No. It was your friends. Mossad doesn't care what happens to you and you know it!"

"It is not a matter of friendships, it is a matter of…" _loyalty_. She swallowed hard and glanced at Gibbs and then Harkness again. "Nothing I say can be 'on the record'," she told the Captain. "If you are recording this…"

"I already cut the CCTV to this room and that's a secure connection through the Torchwood server," he assured her. "Not even Mossad can hack into that."

Abby gave over a look that was filled with no small amount of pride. _As if!_ Mossad had _**never **_been able to crack Torchwood's system, but now with her, Timmy and Mickey on the job? No one, no where, was getting in without an engraved invitation.

"And I don't think I have to tell you that we deal with top secret stuff around her all the time," Jack added. "Just tell us what happened and let us figure out how to fix it."

She sat down in the chair next to the one Abby had previously occupied. She understood why Gibbs would want to help, but Jack Harkness? Unless…she looked up at Abby. Harkness was loyal to her, to all his people—could that loyalty somehow have transferred to _her?_ She thought about what she had said to Malachi on the ship, the Damocles. No matter how much she might have wanted to crawl back into her old skin after the operation had nearly fallen apart around her, after Malachi shot Shalev--Cryer-- she couldn't go back, not really, not any more. Not in the wake of everything that happened over the past year, the seven years before. She had done what she needed to do in order to complete her assignment, but she was not that person any more. She did not want to be. The problem was that she did not know who she was.

Abby sat back down to her, wrapping her fingers around the Israeli's shaking hands—Ziva didn't seem to realize how shaky she was. "You can trust everybody in this room, Ziva," her former colleague told her. "You can trust everybody at Torchwood. You know that, right? Helping people is what we do, it's what Jack does. Believe me, if you're ever in a bad spot, he's the person you want by your side. Well, him and Gibbs," she gave her old boss a wan smile. "Jack just has cooler gadgets," she added with a little smile. "And a pet pterodactyl."

"Bigger guns, too," the Captain smirked, sliding into the chair next to them.

Ianto rolled his eyes; Gibbs pointedly ignored the comment. It was the wisest course of action. _And he can keep the dinosaur… _"What really happened on the Damocles?" he asked.

The Israeli didn't notice Ianto slipping out of the office, but just when she needed it most, he pressed a cup of hot coffee, heavy on the cream and chocolate, into her hands. She smiled her thanks.

By the time the mug was empty, she had told them everything, including how she hadn't expect to survive completing her mission. "I knew it was suicide to go on by myself," she told them. "I did not care. I did not wish to survive. If it were not for you…" she glanced at Gibbs. At Jack. He couldn't die, No matter what happened, he couldn't ever die, he didn't get that out. What must he think of her…?

Abby hugged her tight. "Don't you _ever_ think anything like that again," she told her firmly, softly. "You have too many people who love you and life is way too short and dangerous as it is!"

"I—I know," she gave a guilty look at Abby, at her boss… at Gibbs through the camera, although she could not meet any of their gazes directly. The things that Abby and Tim saw every day, the things Harkness must have lived through…his partner… she felt the Welshman's hand on her shoulder, a quiet comfort. "I am sorry," she said to no one in particular.

"Don't be sorry," Gibbs told her. "You know how I feel about apologies."

"Why don't you two get out of here," Jack suggested to the ladies before turning to Gibbs. "I think we need to talk about a few things," he said to him; the American nodded. There was a _lot _that still needed to be said…


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:**

Special thanks to McParrot for pointing out that insects don't breathe the same way we do. ;-)

* * *

**Chapter Five**

"_We cannot change our past.  
We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way.  
We can not change the inevitable.  
The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have,  
and that is our attitude."_

Charles R. Swindoll

* * *

"It'll be ok," Abby whispered to Ziva as they walked down the winding spiral stair to the main floor of the Hub.

"I am not so sure—" the Israeli did not share her former colleague's confidence.

"Come on, when has Gibbs ever let anybody down? And Jack? I can tell you, it's never. Not ever. Not either of them. Together they're unbeatable. Double unbeatable, even!"

Despite the tightening in her gut, Ziva couldn't help but smile over Abby's…well… 'Abbiness'.

"I have to work on something for our patient," said the American over her shoulder.

"Can I help?"

She debated.

"If I cannot— " perhaps it was something classified… as if the entire base was not classified. Yet here she was, again.

"Are you any good with a soldering gun?" Abby's voice brought her out of her thoughts.

"I have used one…"

She nodded. "I need to get a few things from storage…" she seemed to debate for another few seconds before motioning for the other woman to follow her. Jack might have cats, but honestly who was Ziva going to tell and what was she going to say? "Watch your step, the basement's still a little disorganized. Martha's been shipping stuff to us from London since she took back over up there. I think after Lois snogged her, she didn't want to take any more chances with alien perfume," she explained.

"Alien…perfume…?" and what was snogging, she wondered. But perhaps she did not want to know.

The other shrugged as she led the way down a wide, winding stair. "It's probably just meant to make the wearer more appealing to the opposite sex…or the same sex," she shrugged again. "Jack has something like locked up somewhere—but that's not why he smells the way he does, that's all natural. Fifty first century pheromones." She grinned.

Ziva blinked. "And you deal with things like this all the time?"

"Pretty much."

"Oh! What is that…smell…?" it most definitely was not sex perfume or pheromones from any century.

"Eau de Weevil…come on, I'll introduce you to Janet before we head the rest of the way down."

"Janet?" there had been talk of a Janet at Abby and Tim's wedding, some woman Tony had wanted to meet… Abby was still chatting away, even as she led the way down a long, wide hallway with what were clearly (thankfully empty) cells on either side.

"Janet's friendlier than most people think. She came back practically all on her own after…" she faltered, her expression clouding over a moment.

"Abby?"

"They put a bomb inside Jack, Ziva," she confided in a soft, hurt filled tone. "They put it in him and sent him back here to blow us all up. Why do people do things like that? Why—why did your father set you up in Somalia?"

"He—" she started to defend him, to say that he had not, but it was clear that Abby had already figured it out for herself. Nothing would get her to believe otherwise. It did not matter. It was the truth. "It was just a job."

"But you're his daughter!"

"That did not matter. It…it never has—" suddenly Abby's arms were wrapped around her, squeezing her tight. "Abby—Abbs…"

"I just don't get it! There's enough bad stuff out there, why do people still have to do horrible things to each other down here? This is when it's all supposed to change, when the human race is supposed to get better, but it just keeps getting worse!" she wiped the stray tear from her cheek.

"Abby," Ziva laid a hand on her arm; she had seen Abby emotional, of course, she was an emotional woman, but somehow it seemed worse—or perhaps not worse, there was nothing wrong with feeling hurt by all of the things she must see every day, but this seemed… it seemed more than usual for Abby.

"I'm ok. People just suck. Come on," she motioned her to follow her towards the end of the hall. "I'll introduce you to Janet and then we need to get to work on the respirator for our patient."

"A respirator?"

"Insects don't breathe the same way we do," she explained patiently. "They don't really have lungs exactly—well, they don't actually have lungs at all. That's why we don't have giant insects on earth, and why the Vespiform can't stay here for long without morphing, but it might be a while before he can."

"Morphing?" the Israeli questioned, feeling even more lost than ever.

"It's a defence mechanism, like how leaf bugs look like leaves and stick bugs look like sticks only Vespiforms do more than look like other things, they actually become other things—other species anyway."

Ziva stopped in her tracks. "You mean there are…_aliens_… who can look just like us?" her tone was tinged with genuine panic. If aliens could mimic humans, it really was just like one of those movies that Tony liked so much—anybody could be one of _Them._

"Most of the time they're just explorers. Ziva, it's ok. If it makes you feel any better, Sam's an alien—" it clearly did not make her feel better.

"Sam…the boy in the tourist shop? But he works for you! I thought your job was _hunting _aliens?!"

"We only hunt the bad aliens. Sam got stuck here, just like the Vespiform. And these guys." Abby motioned for her to follow to the end of the hallway. Most of the cells looked almost exactly like they had in the original Hub, but Abby had insisted that Janet's be a little bigger, a little cosier, never mind that to Weevils the sewers were apparently homey.

Ziva took an involuntary step back as the creature behind the thick plexiglass ambled towards them, its nostrils flaring, lips curling upwards…but then it did something with its hands. Her jaw went slack. She did not know the gestures, but she recognized them as sign language.

"She's got the vocabulary and reasoning of a ten year old," Abby told her. "Janet, this is Ziva," she went on, signing as she spoke, although she did both much more slowly than Ziva had seen her and Gibbs signing to each other. Like Abby, their former boss had parents who were deaf. "Janet, can you say 'hello' to Ziva?"

Janet signed 'hello Ziva' at the stranger, earning her a bright smile from the only human who paid her any attention at all. Sometimes that was a bit of a blessing, but some of the new humans were good. This one especially.

Ziva gawped. "It…_she…_ understands you?"

"She sure does," she beamed brightly. "She picked up on sign language faster than most primates. I just wish I could get her to tell me more about where she comes from. About sixty years ago, they just started coming through the rift," she explained, heedless of the fact that she was saying more than she should.

"You mean…there are more of these…these Weevils?" the though did not sit at all well.

"Most of the time they keep to themselves in the sewers and nobody even notices them—well, except for a few city workers, but usually they stay out of each others way—or they call us to give them a hand. Only once in a Weevil comes up into the city—sometimes more than one, they seem to have kind of a pack mentality. Anyway, when that happens we have to bring them here to keep them out of trouble. Most of them Jack keeps frozen—cryogenic suspension," she answered the unasked question of where all the Weevils were. Not that Abby thought that all of Jack and Ianto's late night 'Weevil retrievals' had anything at all to do with hunting rogue Weevils. The boys weren't fooling anybody.

"Cryogenic…that is not possible." The technology was not viable, not yet, perhaps someday, but…

"This is Torchwood," Abby reminded her.

"And… your boss is not going to get angry at you for telling me…?" she asked, a different kind of concern coming over her. She knew what her father would do to someone who had learned a few too many of his dark little secrets.

"We can handle Jack, can't we, Janet?" she winked at the Weevil.

Ziva swallowed.

"Come on, we'd better get to work on the respirator. I just need a couple things—"

Janet keened at her.

"I'm sorry," Abby signed as she spoke, her tone genuinely apologetic. "I have to go make something for Captain Jack. I'll be back later to visit, I promise," she pressed her hand up against the plexiglass. To Ziva's amazement, the creature pressed its hand up to the barrier as well.

"Me and Janet have an understanding," Abby told her, as she led the way back down the hall.

"I see," Ziva was still as weary of the creature as she was uncertain of…of everything, it seemed. Uncertainty was not an emotion she was accustomed to.

……………………………………………………………

Despite Abby's instance that Ziva could stay with her and Timothy, the Israeli was infinitely glad to have been offered the use of Ianto's old apartment. Abby meant well and she was grateful for her friendship, but more than anything what she needed was someplace quiet to sort herself out, especially after today. She was also grateful that at least the Welshman believed that she was no longer actively suicidal (Abby kept bringing up some friend of Chase's who had killed himself and how stupid it was. The truth was that she did not want to kill herself, she simply had not planned to live through her last assignment with Mossad. But she had. She was alive. And she had more to think about than she had realized before getting on the plane that brought her to Cardiff.)

"If you need anything, just ring—I left our number by the phone," Ianto said before taking his leave, having gotten her settled in fairly quickly. He handed over the key. "There's not much in the larder, I'm afraid, I wasn't expecting a guest, but you're within walking distance of at least half a dozen restaurants. There's a little bit of petty cash in the desk drawer—at least enough for a couple of meals," he offered over a friendly smile.

"I will be fine. Thank you. I—I appreciate…" she couldn't quite form the words. She was nothing to these people…she was her father's daughter…yet he had sent her to die and these total strangers were doing so much…

"You can stay here as long as you like, Ziva."

"I…"

"As long as you like," he repeated more firmly. "Don't worry about Mossad or your father. Jack can handle them."

She swallowed. Nodded. She did not know what Harkness and Gibbs had talked about after she and Abby were dismissed from his office, just that he had stayed up there an awfully long time with his door shut and that he had had very little to say when he finally emerged. Neither had his partner.

"Just get some rest. And what I said about being welcome to anything here—don't hesitate to call Gibbs or Ducky or anybody else if you feel like talking. You have a lot of friends, a lot of people who care about you. You're not alone."

"I—I know. Thank you. For everything."

"You're quite welcome."

……………………………………………………..

"Abbs?" Tim was surprised to find her in her lab, seemingly in a daze, well after everyone else had packed it in for the night—all but Bobby and Wendy who were scheduled to babysit the rift over night and him and her, of course. He'd been waiting for her at his station, like always, but when she didn't come out of her alcove, he went looking. And here she was, her hands on her chin, staring off into space… "Abby?"

"Huh?" she started, apparently having just heard him, not even having seen him standing there, waiting for her. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" she scolded.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," she slid off her stool and started gathering up her things.

"Ziva'll be ok…"

"I know." She smiled then. "And so will we. Dad."

Tim's gear slid out of his hands and hit the floor with a loud thunk. He didn't hear it or notice that he'd dropped anything. _"What…?"_

Her grin broadened. "I ran a blood test."

"Oh my God—Abby…" he closed the distance between them without thinking and laid a hand one her stomach cradling her lower back with the other, very gently, suddenly very, _very_ overwhelmed. "You—you're—?" he gaped at her midsection, then at her face and then back again. She was…was she really telling him…? He looked up at her face again.

"Don't get too excited, it's still just a blob—I can't be more than two weeks pregnant. And I'm _not _suddenly breakable either," she informed him.

"But you're pregnant?"

"Yes, Timonty, I'm pregnant," she told him in an exasperated tone. Now she just had to figure out how to tell Jack… and his parents. She supposed it would be unfair of her to suggest they divide and conquer, he shouldn't have to face his folks alone…

"I love you," Tim told her then, pulling her from her thoughts.

She snickered despite her ire. "I love you too. Now how about getting the mother of your unborn child out of here and getting her some tea."

"Yes, Ma'am!"

"And don't get cute, Mister."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he promised. Abby just laughed; he pressed a quick kiss to her lips before gathering his gear back up, insisting on shouldering her bag as well.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:**

Sorry it's been so long between updates, life has been a little hectic the last few weeks. So the plan is to get an update to everything I've got hanging *and* write a new little piece for Short Stories in the next couple of weeks to make up for it. As always, I thank you for your patience and for continuing to read this.

* * *

**Chapter Six**

_"May the love hidden deep inside your heart find the love waiting in your dreams.  
May the laughter that you find in your tomorrow wipe away the pain you find in your yesterdays."_

~Author Unknown

* * *

Ianto set two mugs of hot chocolate down on the coffee table (on coasters, although Jack rarely could be forced to use them) and curled into his husband's chest. It was late. They were snuggled up on the settee watching—or more to the point, _not _watching—some stupid television programme that neither was remotely interested in, anyway. It was the snuggled up together part that mattered.

Jack hadn't been home when he'd gotten there after getting Ziva settled, but he hadn't been expecting him, either. Their conversation with Abby and Tim's old boss had left Jack reeling and he'd said he had some things to take care of before coming home. No doubt at least some of that had to do with the Vespiform, but a lot probably centred around Ziva David as well. Both men had known Mossad Director Eli David, Ziva's father, was a piece of work, what neither had known exactly now callous he was until today. Ianto knew—they all knew—that sometimes hard decisions had to be made, but what Jethro Gibbs told them about Ziva, her half brother Ari, how Eli had essentially set his daughter up to kill her brother—or get herself killed… it left them both feeling twisted up inside, especially after everything that had happened back in September. When Ianto had gotten home, several hours ago, now, he'd enjoyed his time with his children, his daughter and his stepson, even more than usual. He'd appreciated his home, the man who loved him. Even his mother in law.

He still didn't know what Jack had done with the rest of his afternoon, he'd just come home and started through his normal routine. Ella helped him get the kids fed (even if microwaved fish and chips were the panicle of her culinary prowess, it still counted as a home cooked meal as far as the young Welshman was concerned. He certainly couldn't do much better.) After supper, he helped Jason with his homework and spent some time with Seren. She was a fully up and mobile toddler with a vocabulary full of words that had not come solely from him…but he swore, once she started school, the first time her teacher called him in to ask about some of the more interesting words in her vocabulary, he was making Jack handle it… _although maybe that's not really such a good idea either,_ he mused.

By the time he was getting the kids ready for bed, Jack was home, just in time to tuck Jason in and read their daughter her current favourite bedtime story, Rapunzel (the censored version, thank you very much.) Ianto had watched from the doorframe as he told the story, practically from memory. Jack was, contrary to his own belief, a fantastic father. Afterwards it was time for hot cocoa and television, just the two of them. In some ways their life was insanely normal. (If one discounted the former Mossad officer staying at his old apartment, the pterodactyl they kept for a pet or the fact that Ianto's best friend was a werewolf and Jack's was a Time Lord, an alien with two hearts from either the distant past or the distant future, Ianto had never been certain which.)

The Captain leant in and pressed a soft kiss to his partner's forehead. "Penny for your thoughts?"

Ianto chuckled. "You'd be short changed."

"I doubt that."

"I was just… enjoying," he smiled up at him.

Jack shot back an incredulous look; he hadn't been paying much attention to the tele…

"Not that, this," the other corrected him, snugging his arms just a little tighter around the older man's body. "Being with you."

He closed his eyes as a frisson of pleasure, pure joy, shot through him. For a fleeting second he remembered similar moments spent with Alice's mother… but… but he was sure that even those seemed different somehow. Lucia had never fit against him quite so well as the man next to him now. "I wish we could stay like this forever," he confessed softly.

Ianto's chuckle surprised him. "Might get a bit hungry after a while."

The Captain laughed despite himself. "Yeah, I guess we would." It was still a nice thought. Ianto, as it turned out, had an even better one:

"Besides, I can think of more interesting things to be doing upstairs…if you're up for it," he added with a questioning look.

"Why Ianto Jones, are you propositioning me?" Jack teased, brows raised, his body already beginning to respond to the offer.

"That's Jones-Harkness to you, Captain, and what if I am propositioning you?" he taunted.

"I'm not sure I'm that kind of boy."

Ianto laughed, "I beg to differ… _Sir_."

Jack smirked. Sometimes when his Welshman said that word, the way he said it, it sent his blood pounding through his veins (in a decidedly southerly direction). In very short order they were upstairs, having fumbled each other out of their clothes as they went, muffling laughter as well as other, less innocent, sounds in the tumbled race to their bedroom door and the bed that lay beyond. It took Jack all of ten seconds after the bedroom door was shut behind them to wrestle control away from the younger man; in battles of sheer brute force, he had the advantage.

"Cheater," Ianto grumbled as he climbed on top of him.

"Yeah, what's your point?" he asked, grinning, but didn't allow the other to answer, preferring to kiss him instead, long and hard…

* * *

"What do you think of Ziva David?" Jack asked; they'd just stepped out of the shower. He gave his hair a brisk towelling off.

"Why? Thinking of inviting her to join us next time?" the younger man quipped back.

Jack's face lit up, "Do you think she would?"

"Isn't the real question then whether or not I want her in our bed? To which the answer is 'no', by the way. Not in the state she's in."

Despite Ianto's tone, Jack grinned; they'd been together long enough for him to know when his partner was teasing him. Just the same, he was awakre that he was heading towards potentially dangerous ground. "But if she weren't 'in the state she's in'?" he queried anyway.

The younger man rolled his eyes and pulled the damp towel away from him, so he could dry off. As usual there was only one towel in the bathroom, despite the fact that he'd put several on the rack not twelve…no, more like fourteen hours, prior. "What's this really about, Jack?" He asked, knowing that while his husband certainly wouldn't be quick to turn the attractive Israeli woman down, he wasn't asking him whether or not it would be alright to invite her into their bed.

"I just wondered what you thought of her," the Captain answered without quite looking him in the eye.

"She seems all right, I suppose, all things considered."

"All things considered?"

"Well. There's certainly no accounting for her taste in men," Ianto reminded him. Anthony DiNozzo had not made the best of impressions on his first visit to Cardiff. To say that he'd done even worse a few months ago at Tim and Abby's wedding would have been quite the understatement. Particularly in the young Welshman's opinion. Yet, he did remember what Jack had told him of the brash American's behaviour in Somolia… perhaps somewhere under all that bluster there was a real human being after all, someone who appreciated the value of friendship, loyalty. Love. He honestly couldn't imagine a man like Gibbs putting up with less. Suddenly he found Jack's arms wrapped around his waist, pulling him in close. He didn't resist.

"Some guys just have dumb luck," said Jack, his voice a soft purr in his ear as his held the young man snug to his own body. His meaning was clear. He knew how lucky he was. If Ianto had had any sense, he would have left long before they ever got to sharing a house with one, very small, bathroom… before they got to the altar…heck, before they got to a single date.

"It's more than luck Jack. You…you make me happy. Something like that is worth sticking around for, even when you made it difficult."

"You sure about that?"

_"Yes."_

Jack smiled, pressed his lips to the back of his partner's neck. "Come on, let's get you to bed…"

"We're done for the night, Cariad. I have to work tomorrow. So do you."

"What makes you think—?"

"I know you, Jack," he grinned, pulling away and sliding into his pyjama bottoms before handing Jack's over to him, as well. "Which is why I'd like to know why you were really asking about Ms David."

He smirked. "I was thinking…"

"Oh dear. Not again."

"Hey! Not everything I think is bad, you know."

Ianto just barely maintained his deadpan composure. "Oh?" he teased, his voice still flat. "What about—"

Jack cleared his throat, cutting him off. "So occasionally things don't go quite according to plan, that's no reason to—"

_"Occasionally?" _Anyone who didn't know them might have missed the undercurrent of good humour.

"As I was saying…" he began again. "After you left with Ziva, I put in a call to Eli David."

This time the concern in Ianto's expression was genuine. "Jack, please just tell me you haven't started an international incident."

"No."

The Welshman knew that one word did not sum up Jack's conversation with Ziva's father, but he didn't press the issue. There was little Jack valued more than family, loyalty. Love. He sometimes had to make the hard decisions, that was the burden of being a leader, but there were things he would never do, not willingly, not unless there was no other option. He **_never_** would have left someone behind in the field without even attempting a rescue the way Eli David had left his daughter in that Somalian prison camp. He had to have known she was still alive, the intel wasn't that difficult to get. He couldn't possibly have known that Ziva's friends would go looking for her; he'd left her there to die. Or worse.

But if anyone could get her through what had happened in Somalia, it was Jack. Ianto had seen the condition Ziva had been in when they got her back to Cardiff. He'd had bruises like that himself once, after an ill-fated trip out to the Welsh countryside… _never going bloody camping again as long as I live… _and yet, he'd only had to endure a single day fear. Torture. Ziva had been held prisoner for almost three months. It was a miracle she was as together as she was… _and little wonder she bolted when Tony told her he loved her. _

"What happened?" he asked his husband in a carefully neutral tone, as they were arranging themselves in bed.

"After I hung up with Eli David, Sir Alistair called. He gave me an idea…"


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: **Thank you again for all the reviews this has gotten! I'm still at work on the other stories... and not this chapter but next, we will see a flashback to that conversation between Jack and Eli, if only because you've asked for it.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Seven**

_Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime.  
Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day._

_  
_**Nicholas Sparks**

* * *

The sound of his mobile phone ringing woke Tony DiNozzo from restless sleep. As annoyed as he was that anyone would be calling him at…he peered sleepily at the clock on his bedside table. Right. If somebody wasn't dying, somebody was about to die he thought, as he reached for the phone. Even so he was glad to be awake. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Ziva's face hanging in front of him in the dark. Or worse, saw the back of her as she walked away from him.

_I love you_… what a dumb thing to say! In retrospect he knew the mistake for what it was, but he didn't know how to make it right, take it all back, go back to being just friends again and try to take things slowly this time because he still loved her, he wanted her, he just knew, in hindsight, that maybe he shouldn't have blindsided her with it. He hadn't realized how—Ziva wasn't _fragile_, she was one of the strongest people he knew, but he'd seen first hand what she looked like when they rescued her. She'd been hurt, badly, and it wasn't just the Somalis who had hurt her… Bin-Giddon…her father… Mossad… he hated them all. But he hadn't been thinking about any of that (or much of anything) when he blurted out that he loved her, like some star struck teenaged Romeo (_and everybody knows how that story ends, with both Romeo and Juliet dead_). But truth was, the realization that he was in love with her had come like a lightning strike. He hadn't been capable of thinking clearly, if he had…

Gibbs was right, there were no second chances in life. He had to live with his mistake, even if his old boss told him it wasn't really a mistake.

"Yeah, hello?" he grumbled into the phone, still only half awake.

"Sorry about the hour," said a voice on the other end of the line that his sleep-addled brain registered as vaguely familiar and decidedly awake sounding.

Tony looked at the clock again and sat up. "Yeah," was all he had to say in return, wiping one hand over his face, trying to drive sleep away and figure out who exactly he was going to kill for getting him up so early.

"This is Ianto Jones-Harkness," said the speaker, as if well aware that he hadn't yet figured it out, although realistically there wasn't anyone else he knew who had that accent.

"Right," Tony muttered, looking at the clock again. Even with the time difference, it still had to be the crack of dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. "Something I can do for you?" he wanted to know. Only then did it occur to him that Jones, or Jones-Harkness because he was married to Harkness (or whatever it was they did over there), wasn't just the most annoyingly perfect man Tony had ever met (nobody had the right to be that perfect), he was also Tim and Abby's boss… a wave of panic washed over him, knocking the last of sleep from his brain. He didn't know what exactly they did, but he knew it was dangerous. "What happened?" God, he didn't think he could take one more thing, losing one more person… "Abby, McGee—?"

"They're both fine," the other assured him calmly. "I… I just wanted to let you know that Ms David is in Cardiff," he sounded… sheepish? Uncertain of himself. It clashed with Tony's mental image of the prim little Welshman.

However: "Ziva's in England?" he asked. His brain wasn't quite able to wrap itself around the idea of her being there… he slid his feet over the side of the bed and one-handed slipped into a pair of boxers. He didn't want to be talking to Tim and Abby's gay—or, well, not gay, but gay enough—boss when he was naked. It was just…creepy. "What's she doing in England?" he demanded, as he padded towards the kitchen and more importantly the coffee pot.

On the other end, Ianto stifled a groan. Very few Americans seemed to grasp that Wales was its own country, just like England and Scotland and Ireland. Just like the United States, in fact. "I know it's not really my place, but I know how worried I would be if Jack suddenly vanished and I didn't know where he was," the young man confessed, rather than give Tony a much-needed lesson in geography or civics.

He'd woken up early, much earlier than usual. Jack was still asleep, curled up around him, holding on tightly, as if for dear life. He didn't seem to have had another nightmare, he just seemed… he was just holding him. He looked content. Content with their life, their home, their family. _Content with __**me**__,_ he'd thought selfishly. Laying there, with those wonderful strong arms around him, that scent filling up his senses, he felt so incredibly—almost deliriously—happy, so very grateful for so many things, even the things that had hurt, because every single moment of his life had led him to where he was. To Jack. If he'd given up on him, on them, everything would be different. And he hadn't been lying when he'd told Jack he hadn't always made it easy on him.

He remembered those long horrible months when Jack was gone, when he'd left with the Doctor. Even though they hadn't been a 'couple' at the time, had never spent the whole night together, the Welshman had never considered that there would ever be a time when he would come into the Hub to find Jack not there, not waiting for him. What had hurt even more than his absence was not knowing where he was, that he was safe. Not knowing if he was ever coming back or if he'd ever loved him, even a little bit. It made him realize what Tony must be going through and while he couldn't say that he was fond of the other man, no one should have to suffer like that.

"Ziva showed up at Tim and Abby's yesterday," he told the American quietly, even though he knew that by doing so, he was breaking Ziva's confidence. "I'm sure she doesn't want to talk to you right now," he cautioned, lest the other man take into his head to follow her there. "She needs some time to sort things out."

"Yeah. I kinda got that when she split," he said in a bitter sounding tone. "So she…I mean… you guys…? She told you what happened?" God, did they know the _whole_ story? Did they know he'd slept with her? It was one thing for him to admit to Gibbs that he'd screwed up, but he didn't want a bunch of strangers knowing want an idiot he was…and somehow the fact that it was Jones and Harkness made it worse, although he didn't know why. He certainly wasn't about to admit that every time he looked at them he felt a pang of jealousy.

"I'm quite certain Ziva confided in Timothy and Abby far more than she did in either Jack or myself," Ianto assured him smoothly, once again seeming to understand exactly what was bothering him, seeming not to know how annoying Tony found it that he seemed to always know what other people were thinking.

He sighed. He poured his coffee and drank it. "But she's ok, right? You know," _other than the obvious_… "She's going to be all right? Her Mossad supervisor went to see Leon Vance—his name's Malachi Bin-Giddon—" he began, worry seeping into his voice. He didn't know much about Torchwood, but he knew a lot about Mossad. He knew Bin-Giddon.

"Jack has that situation well in hand," the Welshman told him; of course Tony had no way of knowing that he wasn't nearly as calm as he sounded, nor was he as perfect as he perceived.

"Bin-Giddon told Vance she killed an American on her last Mossad assignment," he went on, trying to impress on the other that it wasn't something to be calm about. "He was an AWOL Marine Staff Sergeant—"

"Yes, we know that too."

Tony's jaw clenched. It was like trying to have a conversation with Radar, from MASH. Maybe Jones really did know everything…

"I'm sure that the truth about what happened on the Damocles will come out soon enough," Ianto said in a tone Tony reckoned was supposed to sound reassuring. He wasn't reassured.

"That's the thing, we don't know what happened… do we?" he only barely made it into a question. _He_ didn't know, but _he _didn't know everything. Heck, he didn't know anything. He was stuck floundering around in the dark worrying himself into an ulcer, because if Ziva _had _killed that guy, even if she'd had a good reason, things would get ugly fast. Vance already didn't like her… what if her only choice was to go back to Israel? He was sure that was what her father wanted, and Eli David had a way of getting what he wanted… he said as much aloud.

"I wouldn't worry about it," was all Ianto would say. Ziva had told them everything that happened on her last Mossad assignment. It was Bin-Giddon who had shot the Staff Sergeant; she _had_ killed other people that day and in the days that followed, in the effort to complete her mission, but the death of the Marine Staff Sergeant was squarely on someone else's shoulders—and that was likely the only thing that NCIS Director Vance would care about at the end of the day. "Jack can handle Eli David," he added. "And he can certainly handle Leon Vance."

On the other end there was a pause, no doubt as Tony contemplated that… a soft chuckle followed. "Yeah. I'm sure he can. Hey," he said, as the Welshman began to say his good-bye. "Thanks. I… I'm just glad she's ok."

"She's not ok, Tony," he found himself telling the other man the truth. "But that's not your fault."

"I never…" he began, bristling. But then he changed his mind. He poured himself another cup of coffee. "You sure about that?" he wanted to know—_really_ wanted to know. Because if it was his fault, he would fix it. Somehow. That one day he'd had with her, really with her, had been one of the most incredible days of his life, but if that was all their was to that relationship he could live with it if she'd just speak to him again, if she'd be his friend—let him be her friend. He wasn't about to tell Ianto Jones-Harkness how desperate he was, but he had the sneaking, sinking, suspicion that it was coming through loud and clear on the other side of the Atlantic anyway.

"I—I believe that given time she'll be all right," Ianto told him in an earnest tone. "Jack can help with that—he will help with that. She's got people over here looking out for her."

He bristled again. Harkness played for both teams, for every team, Abby had said, not that Tony knew what that meant. But… "Yeah. Yeah, ok. Thanks," was all he said because it was all he _could_ say. The real message was clear. She didn't need _him_. Right now she didn't even want him. That hurt more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.

They said their final good-byes and Ianto hung up the cordless only to discover Jack standing in the doorway between the kitchen and lounge. "I woke up and you were gone," he explained even though Ianto looked more guilty than surprised to see him.

"Sorry 'bout that."

Jack shrugged. "How's he holding up?" even without knowing, he knew who Ianto had been talking to.

"As well as you'd expect," he answered without fuss. He poured them each a cup of coffee. Jack was already getting the sugar down for them. "I think he blames himself."

He just nodded, watched the younger man fixing his cup. He took it from him. It was perfect as always.

"You don't really think…"

Jack shook his head. He didn't blame Tony DiNozzo for Ziva's mental state. He might have been the last straw, the thing that made her run scared, but the real issues ran deeper. In a lot of ways, Ziva reminded him of John Hart, although he realized that tactical error of pointing that out to his partner. Ianto liked Ziva; he didn't like John. Jack didn't necessarily blame him.

He leant against the counter and studied the young Welshman in front of him. It never ceased to amaze him that somebody like Ianto Jones wanted to be with him, day in and day out, under the same roof, sharing the same bed. The same bathroom. The clothes hamper…. _Only it's Ianto Jones-__**Harkness**__,_ he reminded himself, a little smile of pure pleasure tugging at the corners of his mouth. He didn't recall exactly when Ianto had started using his full name regularly—some time after September, he was pretty sure—but he loved it that he had. "Think you can hold down the fort here for the day?" he queried, rather than giving voice to his thoughts. He knew that maybe he should, he wondered if maybe he'd told Lucia more often how much he loved her, how important their life together was to him, that maybe, just maybe… but when Ianto met his gaze he knew the words weren't necessary, not with him. He understood. He'd always understood. _He loves me as much as I love him._

"We should be all right for the day," Ianto answered the question easily, without inquiring about what was going to keep Jack out of the Hub for the day.

_He never asks…_ he drank his coffee. "I need to drive up to London to check on a few things," which wasn't strictly true, Martha was doing fine. "I thought I'd ask Ziva to ride along." His tone was completely innocent sounding.

Ianto nodded; he knew there was nothing in London needing Jack's attention, but the two hour drive would give them a chance to talk. "Shall I ring Martha and warn her you're coming, then?"

"What? Why—?"

"You don't mean to, Jack, but you have a habit of swanning in and taking over."

"I don't… do I?"

He chuckled; he honestly didn't think the other man realized what he was doing half the time. "I'm afraid so," he leant in and pressed a soft kiss to his partner's lips. "But for all it's worth, I love you anyway," he smiled.

Jack set down his cup; he didn't respond verbally, he just pulled his partner to him, relishing the feel of the younger man's mouth on his. His lips, his tongue, his kiss… the scent of him… the feel of his body as he pressed in close. He didn't know if he would always remember what Ianto looked like or the sound of his voice, but he was certain he would never forget how good it felt when he kissed him.

Their lips were still locked when Jason came into the kitchen several moments later. "Don't you two _ever_ stop!" he wanted to know, giving them each an indignant look. It only served to make the pair grin all the more and kiss again, although it was far more chaste with Jack's son in the room.

"Nope," Jack answered him when he finally slid away from his husband. "And neither will you when you find somebody you love as much as I love your tad." It still warmed him to hear Jason calling Ianto that… it had been such a battle at first.

"Yuck," was Jason's only response; but that warmed him too, because it was such a normal thing for a kid to say about his parents kissing.

The younger man snickered and topped off both of their coffee cups. "Why don't you and your Papa sort out breakfast while I go check in on Seren?" He suggested. It was about that time, she would be awake soon, if she wasn't already. It was definitely better to get to her before she decided she was lonely and bored up in her crib.

"You sure you don't mind?" Jack asked him. Morning diapers were the worst and it seemed as if it was almost always Ianto getting them.

"You cook, I'll change her nappy," he said, as he put on a fresh pot of coffee. "Trust me, Jack, as much as I hate cleaning up after you, I hate my own cooking more." Or more to the point, he hated being bothered, because breakfast, it seemed to him, require more actual work than any other meal of the day, especially since Jack was so fond of big American breakfasts, especially on the weekends and regardless of the fact that he wasn't American. It was more than keeping up the façade, the young Welshman had honestly never seen anybody who enjoyed food quite as much as Jack.

As to his comment about cleaning up after him, the older man just smiled and caught his sleeve, pulling him into another soft kiss (much to his son's disgust) before letting him go see to their daughter. He watched Ianto leave the room then turned to his son, "So, what do you say to pancakes and eggs this morning?" he asked.

"And bacon?"

Jack laughed, "You drive a hard bargain, Mister," he turned on the faucet to wash hands before he started cooking.

"I get it from you," Jason told him.

He glanced over his shoulder. "Oh really now?" he inquired.

"Uh-huh, that's what Grandma says."

He just laughed some more. "I see." Jason had already gotten bacon, eggs and milk out of the fridge. "Do you remember what else we need for pancakes?"

"Flour, baking soda and… chocolate chips?" he asked hopefully.

Jack settled his hands on his hips; he couldn't, however, deny that Jason got a lot of things from him. "All right. And chocolate chips, but _only_ because it's Saturday," he added wearily; his son was already getting the chips down from the cupboard. "You know what your tad is like," he reminded him. Ianto was going to have a fit… or at least give him that look, the one filled with disapproval that spoke so very loudly of things like dentists visits and proper—or not so proper—breakfast foods, even though he probably wouldn't say a single word. He didn't need to, all he had to do was give Jack that look. But all things considered, he could live with that.

Just then Ella came into the kitchen, roused from sleep by the sounds of not-so-quiet breakfast preparations. "Oh my. Ianto left you in charge again, did he?" she said to her son as she crossed the room towards the coffee maker.

"You're supposed to be on my side, you know," he told her with a jocular grin.

"Not hardly," she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, carefully hiding her smile in her cup. It would never do for her son to see just how pleased with him and the choices he'd made on this world, in this time.

And as he looked at the mess he was making on the counter, another thought hit Jack. "Hey, Mom, would you mind doing me a favour?"

"Probably not."

He grinned. She knew him well enough not to agree outright. "Dial Ianto's flat and hand the phone here," he said, because there was certainly going to be enough breakfast to include Ziva and she would, hopefully, appreciate the invitation. "Would you see if we've still got those lamb sausages in the freezer?" he added. "Hey, Jason, get another frying pan down, would you?"

"How come?"

"We're going to cook things a little differently today," he explained, trying to remember what little he knew about kosher meal preparation. His mother had gotten the sausages and was about to get the phone and Ianto came bakc into the kitchen with Seren, just in time to lend a much needed pair of hands…


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:**

I lied, but not on purpose. The Eli conversation will have to wait a chapter, this one went on a little longer than I'd anticipated…

Thank you again for all of the lovly reviews this has gotten!

* * *

**Chapter Eight**

_Love is like a Rubik's Cube:  
There are countless numbers of wrong twists and turns, but when you get it right, it looks perfect no matter which way you look at it._  
**Brian Cramer**

* * *

"You did not have to go through all this trouble," said Ziva, bewildered by the spread on the table, when Ianto Jones-Harkness ushered her into the cosy dining room of his and Jack's home. (They had gotten dressed, of course. Ianto insisted that they not greet her in their bathrobes and pyjama bottoms, even when Jack suggested that they should invite the Israeli woman to show up in the same and make a pyjama party of it, never mind that it was seven o'clock in the morning and hardly the right time of day for a pyjama party…not that Ianto was about to humour him, even a little.)

Although she had not fully expressed it to her hosts, Ziva had not wanted to join them for breakfast; she was more than happy to be on her own for a while longer. But when she tried to refuse politely, the Captain had insisted—and she was aware that she was only there because of him… then it struck her exactly how much truth that statement held. If it were not for Jack Harkness, the rescue mission to Somalia might not have succeeded, or at the very least her friends might have been hurt. The thought of any of them not coming back home, dying for her… she swallowed hard and cast a sidelong glance at the young Welshman next to her.

If he was the least bit aware of the thoughts going on behind her eyes, he did not let on. Ianto merely smiled and pressed a cup of hot coffee into her hands while Jack and his son go the last of the food to the table—his mother was busy getting Seren settled with a plate of scrambled eggs she seemed more interested in wearing than eating.

"Trust me, this is a typical Saturday morning around here," Ianto told the Israeli woman in an earnest tone. "He loves to cook—although it would be nice if he loved to clean as well," he added in a wistful tone, a grin playing at the corners of his mouth. It earned him a flicker of a smile, although he could tell that Ziva wasn't entirely comfortable in their home. He was fairly certain he understood why. He didn't image that her family's house had ever looked like this, or that her father had ever looked like Jack did now, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, laughing at something Jason had just said. His husband had the most amazingly unafraid laugh of anyone he'd ever heard.

What he had said about it being a typical Saturday morning held about ninety-five percent truth. There were lamb sausages in addition to the usual bacon and since neither he nor Jack had been certain if the same rule applied to eggs and meat as cheese and meat, or eggs and butter for that matter, Jack had cooked the eggs in a separate pan with oil instead of butter. And because they weren't sure if Ziva could eat pancakes—or if she liked them with chocolate chips—Jack had shredded up some potatoes, figuring hashbrowns had to be at least close to kosher.

Otherwise, however, the day was starting out the way most Saturdays did…or at least typical of what Saturday mornings had become in the last few months. Back in September, after the week the 456 had terrorized the whole world, Jack decided that barring another alien invasion, Saturday morning was family time for them, even if they were working that day. Most Saturdays wouldn't even see them out of their pyjamas before nine AM—they didn't report into work until ten, sometimes later. Nobody complained.

"Grab a plate off the sideboard and help yourself," Jack said to their guest. "We don't stand on much ceremony around here."

"Which is his way of saying eat up before he gets started and there's nothing left for the rest of us," Ella Harkness advised with a grin.

Jack shot his mother a baleful glower; even Ziva could see that he wasn't serious, however.

"And because you're my son I should lie?" Ella inquired.

"Maybe once in a while," he quipped back.

Ianto did his best not to snicker. Ella ignored him and passed a plate to the uncertain young woman hovering at the threshold. "Here. Eat," she ordered in a motherly tone that got the Ziva moving, although she still looked uncertain. Guarded.

"We were a little…fuzzy…about some of the nuisances of… well…" Ianto nodded towards her necklace. He didn't want it to seem as if they'd made a fuss, she was uncomfortable enough as it was, but he wanted her to know it was safe to eat whatever she liked. "The sausages are lamb and Jack cooked up everything separately, just to be on the safe side."

Ziva blinked, surprised. "Thank you." It wasn't the sort of thing most people thought about. For the most part it had never been a problem, she just avoided the things that she should not eat, and of course there had been times in her life when she had to eat what was available regardless. "Thank you for having me," she told her hosts sincerely. Suddenly she wasn't so sure she really wanted to be alone any more—suddenly she felt extremely lonely. Perhaps tonight she would stay with Tim and Abby…

"It was our pleasure," Ianto assured her, guiding her over to the table. "He really does cook for a small army."

As Ziva was settling herself in, Jack asked if she'd like to ride with him up to London after breakfast. "I have to take care of a couple of things up there and I thought you might like to get out and see the sights," he offered over what he hoped was a winning smile.

"I—thank you," she forced a smile of her own, wondering if he had some ulterior motive for asking her to ride with him. She did not suspect him of anything untoward, but perhaps he was going to tell her that she needed to sort things out with NCIS or Mossad. That she had to leave Cardiff. As much as she did not want to leave, she certainly would not blame him if that was the case. He had his own problems, that alien that had crash landed, the rift that Abby had told her about. She could not imagine how anybody could do job they did and remain the way Harkness and his husband seemed now, the way Tim and Abby had seemed yesterday—happy. Genuinely happy. Even when Timothy had been injured in the weeks before his and Abby's wedding… she glanced at Ianto Jones-Harkness, remembering the conversation she had had with him then…

* * *

"Ianto…? May I ask you a personal question?" Ziva asked hesitantly as she helped the quiet Welshman clean up after breakfast. Surveying the mess, she understood why he had said he wished his husband were as good at cleaning as he was at cooking; it looked as if a typhoon had hit the kitchen. Still, it did not seem as if the young man was unhappy being relegated to clean up duty while the Captain and his son went outside…it looked as if Harkness was trying to teach Jason to play basketball. The boy was having some difficulties learning how to make a basket—his expression was sour. But watching them, it appeared as if Harkness was unflustered by his son's failure as he patiently demonstrated the correct technique again. Even without hearing what he was saying, she could sense that he was giving Jason the gentle encouragement he needed to try again. She could not recall a time when her father was ever like that, gentle. Patient.

Ianto followed her gaze out the window and smiled; he loved watching Jack with their children. He loved every moment of 'normal' that they were able to steal away for themselves, their family. "What did you want to know?" he answered her question, trying to inject warmth into his tone; she had been walking on eggshells all morning.

Ziva turned to face him once more. She was rinsing plates and handing them to him to load into the dishwasher. "How do you do it?" she wanted to know—he gave her an inquisitive look. "How do you live with a man like Jack Harkness?" she clarified.

"You mean…?" he prompted her for a further explanation of her question, wondering if she wanted to know how he lived with someone who would outlive him, all of them, someone who would burry him someday, move on, love again, have another family. Hundreds more families, perhaps.

"Captain Harkness is so…" she did not have adequate words to describe him. Even in her native language, she was not sure what words she would have chosen, if she had to choose just a few words, to sum up the Captain. "You are so… orderly, so restrained," she said at last; she was still fumbling for the right words and it frustrated her. "And he is so…so the opposite of orderly and restrained." She was surprised to see the Ianto laughing, even before she'd finished speaking, although it was clear that he was trying not to, that he did not mean to laugh at her. Perhaps he wasn't actually laughing at her at all.

"Yes, yes he is definitely the opposite of orderly and restrained," he agreed readily, still smiling, even as he glanced around the kitchen. But thinking about Anthony DiNozzo, trying to look at him objectively, he thought he understood the question. "You mean how do I manage to live with someone as chaotic as Jack?"

"Yes. Chaotic. That is the right word." It summed up both Jack Harkness and Tony quite well. Tony was…loud. Crude. Reckless. Unrestrained. He had no sense of boundaries, personal space or propriety. Yet he was loyal, funny…unafraid to laugh. He was honest…what was the phrase…what you saw is what you got. Yes. What you saw with Tony was exactly what you got, there were no hidden surprises, at least not the unpleasant kind (it had certainly come as a surprise to her when he told her he loved her.) She suspected that as complicated as he seemed to be, Jack Harkness was much the same. He did not strike her as subtle.

And she knew by Ianto's expression that he understood the question for what it really was. "I have never been very good with people," she told him, although she suspected that he must already know that. "I have not had many relationships and the ones that I have had have not ended well."

"Before I met Jack, I was in love with a woman called Lisa. She died in the Dalek-Cybermen invasion—the 'incident' that immediately followed the appearance of the 'ghosts' from a few years back," he clarified. Whitehall had done a good job of keeping the situation under wraps, very few people knew that the ' 'incident' at Canary Warf had been an all out alien invasion by not one but two extremely hostile species. Torchwood helped with the clean up, the secret-keeping; at the time he'd thought Jack was just protecting his own, he hadn't known how very separate Jack's Torchwood was from Torchwood London.

"I am sorry," Ziva was saying of his loss.

"It was a long time ago. Still, I'm not sure where I would have ended up if it weren't for Jack. I worked at Canary Warf. I knew that aliens existed, but I'd never seen one up close. I wasn't prepared—no one was."

"That is how you met?"

"Not exactly. We met awhile later—it's complicated," he explained without really explaining. "But I suppose relationships always are," he added with a kind smile. Things didn't have to be as strange and complex his and his husband's lives were, especially when they first met, to be difficult, messy. "Living with someone like Jack is… it's challenging, but it's worth every difficulty because I love him with all of my heart, Ziva," he told her with earnest candour that surprised her. "I make allowances for the differences between us and so does Jack, because it's no easier for him to live with me than it is for me to be with him. Left to his own devices… well, I found dust bunnies under his sofa that probably frightened Myfanwy."

Ziva chuckled. She could believe that of the Captain.

He closed up the dishwasher and set it to run. "He cheats at everything," the young Welshman told her. "And flirts relentlessly with anything that breathes..." he considered Henry. He didn't breathe. But there was no point in bringing him into it. "In a lot of ways, we have very little in common; we literally come from different worlds, different cultures. He looks at the world in ways I will never understand."

"Yet you love him anyway?" she queried.

"Yes. I love him much today as I did the day… as I did the day I realized for the first time that I was in love with him." He poured them each a cup of coffee, then motioned her over to the kitchen table so they could sit down a moment. The kitchen was nearly restored to order.

"How did you know you were in love with him?" she asked, her need to understand her own feelings overriding her sense of propriety. One did not ask these sorts of questions of a complete stranger…but who else did she have to ask? She could talk to Abby, she supposed, but talking to Abby was not always easy. She was so… emotional. She could be overwhelming. Overbearing. She did not mean to be, it was just who she was and like Ianto with Jack, Ziva made allowances because she cared for Abby a great deal. She did not have many friends, the one she had were important to her.

The young Welshman's answer to her question surprised her: "He died. It was the first… I hadn't known he was immortal. He was gone for three days. And when he finally came back to us, he went away again. He ran off and I didn't know where he was or if he was ever coming back. He was gone for a long time. I'd never felt so alone—I've never told him this, but I didn't honestly know how I was going to get through it. I never actually considered… you know… not getting through it. I just didn't know how I was going to manage without him."

"I am not suicidal."

He smiled at her. "I didn't think you were."

"I did not plan to survive my last Mossad assignment. I did things that I would not have done if I believed that I would live. Things I wish I had not done. That is not the same thing…" she realized she sounded defensive. "Abby—" she tried to explain.

"I know. She just wants to make sure you don't do anything stupid."

She nodded. She drank her coffee. "You were saying about you and Captain Harkness?" she asked, not wanting to talk about herself any longer. The subject of Somalia, the Damocles, the things she had done, things she had thought—it was all too fresh, too painful. Too uncomfortable.

"He came back and I forgave him almost immediately. I made him earn back my trust," he cautioned. "I told him he wouldn't ever get another chance if he me left like that again. But I knew the moment I saw him again that I loved him more than I'd ever loved anybody and it didn't matter that he'd gone away, all I cared about was having him back." He took a sip of his coffee. It was oddly easy to talk to Ziva about him and Jack; unlike most of the other people in their lives, she wasn't passing judgements against his partner, she seemed to simply accept the facts as he presented them. She seemed to accept that he had forgiven him and moved on. "It wasn't always easy—it still isn't always easy," he told her. "Relationships are hard work under the best of circumstances—and our lives aren't exactly the best of circumstances. But I would rather work through the rough times with him than to ever be without him again. Jack makes me…he makes me happy," he shrugged. Happy was such a simple little word to describe the complex myriad of emotions he felt for his Captain, but it was the best way he had to describe the way he felt about his life.

_You keep me warm at night, even when you're not here…_ that's how Jack had described it to him once. Jack kept him warm, too.

"When you love somebody the differences don't matter as much as the similarities—even when you drive one another a bit mad at times," he added with a warm smile. Ianto drained the last of his cup and got up to put on a fresh pot just as Jack and Jason were coming in the back door. It never failed; start a pot of coffee and Jack appeared. He smiled quietly to himself. That was the real 'coffee magic.'

"I need to get into work," the Welshman said over his shoulder. He was already late, but seeing as no one had called, he assumed that the world wasn't coming to an end on what was starting out to be a gorgeous spring morning. Of course it wasn't even noon yet, there was still plenty of time for Raxacoricofallapatorians to descend on city hall… "You should be on your way, too," he added in his husband's direction, "if you want to make it to London and home again before supper." He waited for Jack's nod to continue. "And remember what I said about not swanning in on Martha and taking over, Cariad," he said in a warning tone, although even Ziva saw on the twinkle of good humour in his gaze. "She's got enough going on as it is." Jack didn't know it, but he'd already had one late-night conversation with Martha over the Camille Johnson situation. They were nearly to the six month point and neither was sure whether or not Johnson would be putting in a re-appearance. Both he and Martha rather wished she wouldn't. He supposed he no longer wished that she would fall off a cliff, or into a volcano perhaps, not that there were many volcanoes in Great Britain (in point of fact, there were none, at least none that were active, but one could wish.) Even if he no longer actively wished for her unpleasant demise, he didn't want her working for them, only Jack had a way of getting what he wanted, and for some reason he felt he owed Johnson because she'd stuck her neck out for them—after trying to kill them. As far as Ianto was concerned, the score was settled, even.

Oblivious to the sour turning of his partner's thoughts, Jack smiled. "You just be careful out there today," he told the younger man. He drew him in close, encircling his waist with one hand, cupping his face with the other; he leant in and lowered his voice, "I have plans for you for tonight, Mr Jones-Harkness, and they involve pineapples and whipped cream." His tone was pitched somewhere between a threat and a promise. "So you better come home in one piece."

Jason made a strategic retreat before they started kissing again, although compared to the kiss he'd walked in on first thing that morning, it was completely chaste.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: **

As always a HUGE thank you for the reviews this has recieved! As promised, the Eli "discussion" follows... Great Big THANKS go to Kitsa for her help with it.

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

_So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty.  
All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modelled upon it._

Haniel Long

* * *

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack watched the Israeli woman sitting next to him in the SUV. She appeared to be watching the scenery go by, oblivious to the fact that they'd just crossed over the bridge into England. Ianto had called just before they were about to cross over, seemingly having timed his partner's journey perfectly—little surprise there—to remind him not to drink the water or sample the native cuisine, one never knew what one might pick up. Somewhere behind Ianto Mickey had made a rude noise and something _ka-thunked_ near by, possibly having been thrown by the Londoner. In the background, Myfanwy shrieked her displeasure and Bobby wondered loudly enough to be heard over the phone about why they kept a man eating dinosaur in the first place. Abby's response had been muffled over the line, but the entire exchange had left Jack's mood decidedly brighter.

His bright mood was fading again, however, not even fifteen minutes after hanging up with his husband, as he continued to watch Ziva. It was obvious even to him that she was troubled, guarded. She had every right to be, but it made him wonder if he was really making the right decision here… _but what other choice do I have? _ His only other option seemed to be sending her back to her father and after yesterday, that wasn't an option.

_"Trust me," he'd said to the secretary who answered his call, "David will talk to me. Tell him it's Torchwood." The girl on the other end of the line was either new and clueless or being difficult (bordering on truculent) on purpose. Either way, he finally got her to put David on the line. "It's Jack Harkness," he identified himself immediately, although he hoped David had been told at least that much. He'd begun his conversation with the secretary with a rather civil 'this is Jack Harkness calling for Eli David.' He was trying to play nice, he didn't want to start an international incident, especially not with an injured Vespiform and the possibility (however unlikely) of interplanetary incident on his hands._

_David skipped over the pleasantries. "I hope you're not going to tell me we're under alien attack. Again," was all he had to say by way of hello. His tone seemed to suggest that it was somehow Torchwood's fault—Jack's fault personally—that the earth had come under recent 'alien scrutiny'. That had been David's way of describing the situation to a group of colleagues, Harkness included, in the months after the 456 attack, when Jack had made the attempt to work with the heads of a select few government agencies around to the world, warn them that it was going to leak out out about what their governments had been prepared to do, the deal they'd made with the 456. He had wanted to curb the panic and chaos that was likely to ensue, to contain as much damage as possible. All he'd gotten for his trouble were animosity and accusations, a bitter reminder of why he didn't play well with others. _

_"This is about your daughter," Jack cut right to the chase. He was in no mood for verbal sparring. _

_There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "Officer David is in the United Kingdom." It wasn't a question although clearly David was surprised by the news._

_"She's in Cardiff."_

_"You will put her on the first plane back to Tel Aviv so she can return to duty—"_

_ "She told me she quit Mossad," Jack cut him off, genuniely perplexed by the other man's statement. According to Ziva she had resigned over a week ago._

_"Nobody 'quits' Mossad unless I allow it. Regardless, she is an Israeli citizen—"_

_"Who's here on a legitimate visa," he reminded the other. "When," …_**if**…_ "she decides to go back to Israel—"_

_"**I** decide where my daughter goes, Harkness!" _

_That had torn it; Jack lost what little composure he'd begun the conversation with. "The same daughter you threw to the wolves in Somalia?" he demanded furiously. "The one you left to **rot** in that prison camp?! Did you **see ** what they did to her?" he yelled, full blown rage filling him—it was coupled with a lingering, nagging guilt over his own past. Gray. His brother. The little boy whose hand he'd dropped so he could run faster, so **he** could escape the invaders. The child who had trusted him but who he'd abandoned instead. He couldn't remember what Gray had been like, not really, but he knew it was his fault he'd turned into the monster he became. He'd left Gray to be tortured all those years, he'd failed to find him… "Do you have any idea what they did to her over there? Where the Hell were you, Eli? You weren't even looking for her," he spat, his voice ragged with emotion._

**_Weeks,_**_ they'd had Ziva for _**weeks**_ and from all appearances the only people who had cared were Abby, Tim, Gibbs…Tony DiNozzo. If Abby could find her than Eli could have found her, she hadn't used but a fraction of Torchwood's resources to figure out where Ziva was being held. Mossad had agents operating in the Horn of Africa…_

_"Every Mossad Officer knows the risks—" the other began in a heated tone, interrupting his angry thoughts._

_Jack cut him off again: "She's your **daughter,** your own flesh and blood. That's supposed to **mean** something. We almost lost ten percent of this world's children—"_

_"Ziva is no child, she is a grown woman," there was a pause. " Or is that what this is really all about?" his voice had taken on a suddenly sly edge. _

_Stunned, Jack sat back down (he wasn't aware of when he'd gotten to his feet); cool rage replaced heated anger. "No," he answered the veiled accusation in a bitter cold tone. David was actually accusing him of sleeping with his daughter. _

_A wiser man might have recognized the particular kind of deathly, deadly, chill in the Captain's voice and the danger it represented and backed down immediately. Eli David wasn't, apparently, a wise man… or perhaps he was simply too arrogant to realize he'd just made a serious tactical error. _

_"I don't care who my daughter sleeps with, Harkness. But you _**will**_ put her on the first plane back to Tel Aviv."_

_"Or you'll do what exactly?"_

_There was an extended pause on the other end of the line. "This isn't over."_

_"Yes. It is. Effective immediately Ms David is under Torchwood's protection." _

_"You can't—" Eli sputtered._

_"I'm sure Her Majesty will be happy to make an official request of the Israeli government," he continued on in a cool tone, mostly without thinking. Without waiting for an answer to what he hoped wasn't a hollow threat, Jack hung up the phone. Still, after everything they'd been through, it was a small request for him to make. _I hope.

_ He poured himself a glass of Scotch and downed it. The fiery liquid did little to warm him. He was just considering a second glass and mulling over exactly what he was going to say when he made that call to Buckingham Palace when the phone rang. It was Sir Alistair. His timing couldn't have been better; he gave Jack a simple answer to **two** problems…assuming Ziva was up for the challenge, anyway._

Thunder rumbled across the sky, as heavy grey rain clouds blew in, disturbing what had promised to be a perfect day. "Welcome to England," Jack joked to his passenger.

Ziva managed a smile; it seemed forced.

"Do you mind if we make a stop on the way to London?" he asked. It was hard for him to drive past the exit for the town where Alice lived without stopping in to see her and Steven, even if it was only for a few minutes. The last few months had been so good, so incredibly, unbelievably amazing—sometimes he still expected to wake up and find he'd dreamt the whole thing, that Alice didn't want anything to do with him. He was still terrified that she would change her mind, move away, that he would never see her or Steven again—and he was so grateful that so far she hadn't. She was even starting to talk about the possibility of meeting her grandmother of letting Steven meet Jason.

He glanced at Ziva again, wondering how her father could treat her the way the he did, like she was nothing, just another asset. Wondering how he could have just left her in Somalia knowing what was being done to her, because he had to have known.

The Israeli gave over another shy flicker of a smile. "I…what is the expression, 'I am at your mercy'?" she tried for levity when in answering his question. It garnered a smile, complete with dimples. _Captain Dimples,_ Tony had called him. It was not meant as a compliment, but Ziva rather liked the Captain's dimples. They gave his face a warm, friendly look. He seemed unafraid to smile or to laugh. It must be difficult to be that brave.

"You should be careful how you say things like that, Ms David, a man like me might take you up on it," he teased; still, it soured his stomach to think that her father had actually accused him of sleeping with her. Not that she wasn't a beautiful woman and not that he would turn her down if Ianto were willing to entertain the notion of inviting her into their bed. But the younger man was right, right now she was too fragile. "My daughter lives not too far from her," he explained, as he pulled off the highway. "I'd like to stop in and say hello.

"You have a daughter?" she asked, surprised.

He nodded. "And a grandson—he doesn't know. About me," he explained. "He's only ten. He wouldn't understand."

She blinked a moment, digesting the new information, assimilating it with what she already knew. Harkness didn't age. Old age did not kill him. He was human, but apparently not from earth. "How long have you been here?"

"A little over…" _two thousand_… "two hundred years." Some things didn't bear getting into. If she accepted his offer, she would probably hear the story eventually. In the meantime, it didn't matter. "I come from another time," he explained. "Jason was born there. Seren, too, thanks to a friend with a really nice sports car," he couldn't help but grin.

Ziva frowned. "A—?" _sports car?_

"It's a joke. He's a time traveller, like I used to be. Only his is a sports car, mine is…or was… a puddle jumper." Although if he hadn't managed to fix at least part of the circuitry on his 'puddle jumper', her rescue would have been that much more difficult. Just as long at the Doctor never found out he'd managed to fix his wrist strap a second time…still, it wasn't like he had any plans to go anywhere. This was home, this world, this time. His Welshman. His children, grandson…great grandson. He'd be lying if he tried to say he wasn't fond of Shane.

"I see," said Ziva, although truthfully she did understand at all. Another thought occurred to her, however. "Why did you adopt your daughter from another time?" she inquired; she was only vaguely aware that the question itself should strike her as far more absurd than it actually did. But yesterday she had watched Abby holding the 'hand' of a giant bee.

"Seren isn't adopted, she's ours. Mine and Ianto's."

"But you are both men."

"Jason's other father was a man. He's…he died." He explained quietly, before she could ask. "In a few thousand years it won't be so extraordinary for two men…or three… or whatever combination… to have children that are biologically equally a part of each of the parents."

"Three…?"

He shrugged. "Eventually that won't be so uncommon, either."

"I can not imagine living in a world like that," she told him honestly. "I have not had such an easy time being in a relationship with only one person."

"That part never gets any easier," said Jack. He turned onto his daughter's street.

"What about your daughter? Was she born…?" She did not mean to pry, but talking to Captain Harkness was almost as easy as talking to his partner and she would have been lying if she tried to deny that she was curious, especially after spending yesterday at their 'Hub'.

"Alice was born in 1969, in Cardiff. Her mother worked for Torchwood. We weren't together long. It ah—it's not always easy on Alice having me for a father."

Ziva gave him a look; Jack imagined that in a lot of ways she could relate.

It made him wonder if Lucia had been right after all, when she told him to stay away...in the back of his mind, Jack could almost hear Ianto's voice, telling him that he was nothing like Eli David. It made him smile, just a little, as he eased the SUV to the curb in front of his daughter's house. He might not be the best father--he might even be one of the worst--but he loved his children.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

"_Whatever they grow up to be, they are still our children, and the one most important of all the things we can give to them is unconditional love."_

Rosaleen Dickson

* * *

The door swung open wide, but the smile on the boy's face was even wider. "Uncle Jack!" he cried.

"Hey there, Soldier," Jack pulled Steven up into his arms and held him tight for a long, long moment. There had been a time, not so long ago, when he didn't think he was ever going to be allowed to see his grandson again. Alice had been too frightened by everything that had happened back in September, too upset by the things she had discovered about his life the day she came to visit him at the Hub. She had gotten over her fear, at least as much as any parent had, but she still didn't seem to understand that it didn't matter that he had his 'own' family, _she_ was his family too, he loved her—her and Steven both—and nothing could ever change that. However, "what's your Mom always telling you about opening up the door?" he asked the boy, just as Alice was coming down the stair. Her expression was sour enough that it made Jack wonder if he'd crossed a line by showing up unannounced. He'd stopped in like this a number of times on his way to or from London. Maybe he was pushing her too hard, maybe…

"But I knew it was you!" Steven was telling him, protesting being scolded about opening up the door. "I could see you through the glass!"

"You didn't know who was with him, did you?" Alice inquired in a stern tone, giving the woman lingering just behind her father a dubious, scrutinizing look. She was dressed like a civilian, dark slacks, red sweater, hair pulled back into a loose braid—but everything else about her, the way she stood, the way her dark eyes seemed to pick out every detail of the entranceway, said that she was 'military.'

Because of that, Alice reached for her son, some part of her mind not quite trusting her father; in the same instant she felt a frisson of guilt for being suspicious of him. He was the one who had protected Steven that day, he'd been the one to say that they would find another way to fight off the 456, that they weren't going to sacrifice even a single child to them. If it hadn't been for him… she still remembered the look on that horrible man's face. Dekker wanted to use Steven, he wanted to see what would happen, as if her son were little more than some lab rat. She held onto her boy just a little tighter than she'd meant to.

"Mummy!" he squirmed and wriggled until she set him down again. He wrapped his arms tight around his Uncle Jack's waist, almost as if afraid to let go.

Jack tussled his hair and gave his shoulders a gentle squeeze before meeting his daughter's questioning gaze. "We can't stay long. I just wanted to stop in and say 'hi'. This is Ziva David—she used to work with Tim and Abby, in Washington," he explained, hoping that whatever damage he'd done by showing up unannounced, he could undo it.

"It is a pleasure to meet you," Ziva extended her hand towards his daughter.

Alice accepted her handshake. "It's nice to meet you, too. I'm Alice Carter—although I imagine you knew that already," her gaze flickered briefly back to her father's face; he nodded. Ziva David knew who she was, who she really was.

Ziva nodded also, then turned to the boy standing next to Captain Harkness. "And you are Steven, yes?"

"Yes, Ma'am. It's very nice to meet you," he held out his hand.

Her smile warmed a bit as she shook it. "You are a very polite young man."

"Don't let him fool you," Alice advised. "He's a terror. But I love him," she gazed fondly down at her son.

Of course at his age, Steven was no more fond of parental adoration than any other ten year old. He made a face that the adults pretended not to notice, particularly his mother.

"Ziva's keeping me company on the ride up to London," Jack told his daughter, still hoping…

But Alice merely nodded, her expression unreadable. "Your accent isn't American," she said to the other woman.

"I am from Israel."

"But you worked with NCIS?" she queried.

"I was a Mossad liaison."

"What's Mossad?" Steven wanted to know.

Alice opened her mouth to tell him it was rude to ask too many questions, but Ziva spoke first:

"It is an agency in Israel, like your MI-6," her tone betrayed nothing but gentle patience.

The boy's eyes grew wide. "You're a spy! Like James Bond—only a girl?" he wanted to know.

Ziva chuckled. "No," she lied. "I worked with the United States Navy. I was like a police officer." Which was the truth, just not the whole of it.

Steven wasn't any less impressed. "That's cool! Do you carry a gun?"

Alice cleared her throat; she'd had enough of guns for a lifetime. "All right, why don't you go upstairs and play—"

"But I want to visit!"

"Hey," Jack cut off his argument. "Wasn't Ms David just saying how polite you were?"

"I guess."

"All right then. So… how's that model you were working on the last time I was here?" he inquired, all traces of parental sternness vanished from his tone.

"It's almost finished, do you want to see?"

Jack gave his daughter a questioning, almost pleading look.

She smiled, relenting immediately; the look on Steven's face was almost identical to the look on her father's. "Go on," she told them both.

Steven put his hand into his and tugged him towards the stairs…

"No sweets, Captain!" Alice called after them. "It's nearly lunch time."

He shot her a smile over his shoulder; there had been a time when she used to go rummaging through the pockets of his greatcoat for sweets and chocolates…her grin told him that she remembered it too and that she was on to the fact that he'd taken to tucking things away for his grandson. Still, it was enough to convince him that maybe everything was all right between them after all, that she wasn't going to shut him out again.

Alice turned towards Ziva. "I'll put the kettle on for us in the kitchen while the boys go play upstairs." Her smile seemed real.

Ziva returned it. She followed Alice Carter into the kitchen.

"Would you prefer coffee or tea?" asked Alice, still wondering what the real story was. Her father didn't need someone to 'keep him company' on the ride up to see Martha Jones—if he was going to London, it could only be to visit Torchwood's newly re-opened London branch. He didn't visit London casually, not any more. Neither did she.

"Whatever you are having is fine with me."

She nodded. Tea it was, then. "How much do you know about the Captain?" she inquired in a casual tone as she filled the tea kettle and set it on the warmer to heat. She was fairly certain…

"He told me that you are his daughter, that Steven is his grandson. That Steven does not know."

"It must be hard to imagine," she said to her. "I look older than him."

"He was shot in front of me. He died. He did not stay dead."

Alice nodded again. She supposed after watching the man who can't die take a bullet and come back to life, it wasn't so amazing to consider that he had a forty year old daughter, a ten year old grandson. "What brings you to the UK?"

"I…lost something recently. I am trying to find it again."

"Dad's a good one for that—finding lost things," she told her in a sincere tone. She was sure that whatever Ziva David had lost, it wasn't some material object. There was a sorrow in her eyes, a weariness about her. Whatever it was, it ran deep—Alice could relate. "Do you take milk and sugar?" she asked.

"Just milk. Thank you."

"Have a seat," she nodded towards the table as she got a couple of cups down out of the cupboard and reached for a round tin she kept stashed way in the back. "Biscuit? They're chocolate," she added, holding up the tin.

"Yes. Thank you. Are you sure I cannot help with something?"

"You can get the milk, if you'd like. In the fridge—top shelf, in the pitcher. It was a school project," she explained as the other pulled the rather poorly painted brown cow pitcher from the refrigerator. Milk poured out of the cow's pursed lips. "I haven't the heart to tell him that it's a bit disconcerting to start my morning, pouring milk from a cow's mouth."

"It is the… the thought that counts," Ziva told her.

"Yes. All of the other mothers got paper weights and widgets, apparently. Steven wanted something more practical."

"He must get that from you," she began…then wondered if she had said more than she should, she still did not consider herself good with people…_not like Tony, he always seems to know what to say… _but the other woman chuckled.

"You've been around my father a while, then, I take it?" she asked.

"Enough to realize that he is not especially practical."

"I'm honestly not sure how Ianto manages him most days," Alice only barely faltered at her father's husband's name. Fortunately, the tea kettle clicked to off. The water was hot and pouring it provided enough of a distraction for her to change the subject. She asked Ziva if she had worked with Jethro Gibbs, since she knew Tim and Abby had also worked with the retired Marine. Apparently it was a good choice of topics, as the Israeli brightened a bit, relaxed a little more… chocolate biscuits and milky tea didn't hurt any, either.

* * *

"How do you do it?" Ziva asked Captain Harkness, after they were back on the road. The visit hadn't lasted long. Harkness was upstairs with his grandson just long enough for her to finish her tea, but not so long that her conversation with his daughter became stilted or uncomfortable. They had chatted over the weather and other innocuous things. Alice was very proud of her son's accomplishments, even though he had only come in second place at a recent spelling bee. Her own father would not have shown off a second place ribbon… _there are winners and then there is everybody else. Only the winners are remembered, Ziva. Second place does not count… _and she realized that the Captain was giving her a questioning look, having not understood her question. "Having two families," she clarified.

"I love them both," he told her honestly. "I cherish every minute I get to spend with Alice and Steven—I just wish I could see them more," he admitted—the admission came as a surprise, to both of them. He hadn't intended to open up quite so much to a relative stranger, he just wanted to put her at ease, to help her open up to him about what had happened to her in Somalia. "Things are a little… uneasy… between me and Alice," he added, anyway, although he suspected that Ziva had picked up on that herself.

"Is it because you are with a man?" she asked.

He shook his head. "It's because I'm with someone almost half her age. Because I look younger than her. Because she doesn't understand what happened between her mom and me and I'm not sure I know how to explain it without making Lucia look bad—and that's not fair to either of them. I'm hoping eventually Alice will be up to—reconciling," he shrugged. It wasn't quite the right word, but it was the best one he could come up with.

"You did not see much of Alice when she was younger?"

"No. Her mother told me to stay away."

"And you did?" she asked, surprised. Harkness acted so devoted to his family, his children.

"It seemed like the right thing to do at the time," he told her honestly, changing lanes, easing back onto the highway.

"Do you regret it?"

"Every single day."

She nodded. She was quiet a long moment before asking if Gibbs had told him about her brother—her half brother—Ari Haswari.

"Yeah."

"I shot him."

"He told me that too. You saved Gibbs' life."

She took in a breath, let it out again. "What Gibbs did not tell you—what he did not know—is that I did it because my father told me to. Do you know why he told me to kill my brother, his son, Captain?"

"He was Hamas?" he speculated; Gibbs had told him that Ari Haswari, a former Mossad officer, was part of an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell in DC and that he had killed a member of Gibbs' team, just to get at Gibbs.

"No," Ziva told him. "My father told me I had to kill him to gain Gibbs' trust. He wanted me inside the United States Navy. I worked with Ari, Captain Harkness. He was my brother. He was my _friend_," she closed her eyes against the emotion that threatened to break free and spill out. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. "But I was Mossad first. Foremost. I did as I was told, even when I did not want to. I even tried to make myself believe I was doing the right thing."

"It doesn't sound like you do what you're told any more. At least not when it's Mossad issuing the orders," he observed, his tone carefully neutral.

"When I went back to Israel after…" she hesitated. _After Tony shot Michael…_ Michael Rivkin, another spy her father had sent make sure she was doing as she was told, doing what he wanted her to do. A man she was sure had used her to gain access to NCIS. Michael had not loved her; head probably not even cared about her. He was just following orders as a good Mossad officer should. "When I returned to Israel, I tried to fit in with Mossad, to be the person I had once been. But I am not that person any more. I do not _want_ to be that person."

"Who do you want to be?"

She hesitated again before finally telling him the plain truth: "I do not know. I had hoped…" she swallowed hard. She had hoped that despite the differences of the past, Vance would accept her application, that she could be able to become a full NCIS agent. That she could finally be free of her past. Mossad. Her father. "I was _**never **_disloyal to NCIS, Captain, no matter what my father wanted me to do," she told the him, although she doubted he was the one she had to convince. Harkness would listen to what Gibbs told him and she knew Gibbs believed in her even though she did not deserve it. She had betrayed him and everything he stood for on the Damocles and in Somalia, even though she was not the one who had shot that Marine. Gibbs had taught her the value of honesty, loyalty. What it meant to be a part of a team, and she had thrown that all away when she returned to Israel and her father. She hated herself for that. Perhaps she did not deserve to be an NCIS agent. "I am sorry," she brushed her hands over her cheeks, wiping away the stream of tears that were trickling down. "I am sure you did not invite me along to listen to me sobbing into my wine," she forced a grim smile.

Jack smiled back at her, reached over. Laid his hand on top of hers. He didn't correct her, tell her that the expression was 'crying in her beer.' He knew what she meant and that was all that mattered. "I had a brother too," he told her instead. "His name is Gray."

"Something happened to him?" She asked, almost needlessly. She could hear in his tone that the story was not a happy one.

"Yeah. Yeah something happened to him. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it wasn't—sometimes it's hard to tell," he explained. Ianto kept telling him it wasn't but he didn't really believe that. "But… he was hurt. It changed him. Made him…made him into a person I didn't recognize. He hurt a lot of innocent people.

"I've been hurt too," he went on. "There… well, sometimes when people figure out I can't die…" he shrugged, suspecting that going into the gory details wouldn't do either of them any good. "I think the only difference between me and Gray is that I had someone to come home to." The Doctor. Then later, his Welshman. "I had someone waiting for me. Someone I could talk to." Even when he wasn't sure Ianto would ever forgive him for leaving the way he had to, running off with the Doctor without a word, the younger man had still promised him that they would always be friends, that he would always listen to him. "I know it doesn't seem like talking helps—"

"I am not ready to talk about Somalia," Ziva told him. "I do not know if…if I ever want to talk about it. You are right. It does not seem as if it would help," she added.

"You should try it anyway," he advised her. "If you can't talk to Abby or Tim or even Gibbs, there's always me. Believe it or not, I'm a pretty good listener."

She frowned over at him. "Why?" She was nothing to him, no one…

He shrugged, "That's what people do when they care about each other."

"You…care…about me?"

"Yeah. I do," he answered with enough conviction to make her believe that he meant it.

With entirely too much to think about, Ziva turned towards the scenery again. Jack turned on the radio and slid a Big Band Era CD into the slot. She shot him an inquisitive look.

"I spent a lot of time here during the War. The music kinda grew on me."

She smiled, just a little, before going back to staring out the window. The rain seemed to have passed and the sun was back out. It did not help her mood.

Jack let her mull over…everything, he supposed, until they were just to the London exit. "If you're interested," he said, "I have a job offer for you."

* * *

**A/N:**

Tony DiNozzo shot Mossad officer Michael Rivkin, Ziva's boyfriend, in self defence when Rivkin attacked him in Ziva's apartment. DiNozzo was there because he'd traced a terrorist communication to a computer that Rivkin was using. Rivkin had already been asked once to go back to Israel by NCIS.

The bits about Ziva and Ari were revealed during the Season 6 finale in a "discussion" between Vance and Gibbs – but since in our AUverse Gibbs wasn't working for NCIS, that conversation never happened.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

"_Nobody can go back and start a new beginning,  
but anyone can start today and make a new ending."_

Maria Robinson

* * *

Ziva blinked, stunned by what Captain Harkness had just said. "You… are offering me… a job? With…Torchwood?" she stammered, unable to believe that was what he really intended. Not after everything he had learned yesterday, about her, about Somalia, the Damocles…about Ari… and there was still an ongoing NCIS investigation into the death of that Marine…

"Not exactly _with _Torchwood—although it's me you'd be reporting to," he specified quickly.

"I do not understand."

"During the 456 attack last September, Torchwood came under fire from the British Government," he told her, trying to keep the story as simple as he could.

Ziva nodded, "Yes…I…" she did not want to tell him that she already knew what had happened, that Abby had told her (she was certain Abby should not have as much as she had), but she did not want him to waste his time telling her what she already knew, either. But if the Captain was concerned about how much she knew already, it did not show on his face. He simply continued speaking:

"The problem wasn't just with Whitehall. We…_**I**_… haven't always had the best relationship with UNIT," he admitted. "But they should have kept us in the loop. Colonel Oudya, the UNIT officer who was sent in to take charge of the situation, apparently didn't consider it the least bit strange that we weren't being consulted, that I wasn't directly involved in what was going on. More than that, he didn't take charge, he let John Frobisher, a government paper pusher, take over. The result was… a lot of people died who didn't have to. People were hurt. More could have been. It shouldn't have happened the way it did. That's why I re-opened Torchwood One, to make sure that we would never be shut out again, to give us a presence right here in London."

She nodded. It made sense. However, "What does that have to do with me?"

"Like I said, it was more than just what was happening in London. It was what happened with UNIT. That's why I'd like you to consider being Torchwood's official liaison to UNIT."

* * *

Even Plastic Death, Abby's favourite band of all time, couldn't calm her nerves. She'd changed CD's six times, alternating between all of her favourites, before putting on the newest Plastic Death…but it wasn't helping. She paced back and forth across her lab looking for something to do, anything to keep her mind off…

"Abby?" Wendy poked her nose carefully into the lab. "Are you all right, Sweetheart?" she asked. Abby had been in an agitated state all morning.

"No," she snapped. Then, "Sorry." She didn't know why she was so on edge…well, she did know. She thought she knew. "You can come in, it's safe," she said when she noticed Wendy still lingering. "I don't know what's wrong with me today."

"Is it…?" Wendy raised an eyebrow and glanced significantly towards the other woman's midsection.

Abby's eyes grew wide. "You know! How could you know? I didn't tell anybody except Timmy! No one's supposed to know, not yet!"

Wendy smiled and tapped the side of her nose. "Heightened sense of smell. I figured by the way you're acting you must already know." She pulled up a stool and sat down. She reached over and patted the stool next to her, encouraging Abby to sit as well. "You're not very far along, are you?"

Reluctantly, the other woman sat, resting her elbows on her knees, her chin cradled on her hands. She looked glum. "A couple weeks, I guess." She sounded as glum as she looked.

"I thought this was something you wanted."

"It is! But… Jack didn't come into work today. And I was going to tell him, first thing, but he's not here, is he? He's in London. And he took Ziva with him!" She seemed to be having to work herself up to actually sounding so angry at the Captain. "It's not fair! I wanted to tell him before I told anybody else, but I just can't not tell everybody and it's driving me crazy!" she sprang to her feet again. "You didn't tell anybody, did you?" she gave over enough of a glare to (almost) frighten the other woman.

Biting back a snicker, Wendy promised her, hand on heart, that she hadn't breathed a word of it to anyone, not even Bobby. "You know, it would serve Jack right if he were the last to find out."

Abby blinked. She hadn't thought of that. But… "I don't know…" he was Jack, he was their Captain, their fearless leader, the Dashing Hero. He would be devastated…

"Abby, you need to at least tell Ianto," Wendy advised her. "He needs to know before something comes up. You know what Jack will say if you go out into the field, even if you're just a couple of weeks along."

"I guess you're right. Do you know where he is?"

"Jack's office. Apparently the Captain left him a small mountain of paperwork."

Abby bit her lower lip. Maybe she shouldn't disturb him… but Wendy stood up and held out her hand. "Come on. Let's go get this over with. You'll feel better."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She gave her a look, "How can you be so sure?"

"Because he'll make you a nice cup of ginger tea and that always makes everything better."

She smiled. Then, "Wen… are you and Bobby ever going to have kids?" she asked, stopping her before they left the lab.

Wendy shook her head. "No. He'd make a fantastic father but… I don't think it's something I want to do, not…not under the circumstances…" she only barely finished her sentence; Abby's arms were wrapped around her tight.

"You're not alone, you know," she said with more than enough conviction to persuade the other that it was the truth—not that she needed persuading.

"I've known that for a long time, Sweetheart," she returned the American's fierce hug anyway. "If there's one thing I learned here it's that there's more to family than blood—or even DNA," she managed a grin.

Abby gave her another tight squeeze. She hoped Jack was able to make Ziva believe that too…

* * *

The Israeli gaped at him. They were just pulling into the lot behind a large warehouse. It didn't look like much. She barely noticed. "You…want _me_…to work for you?" Captain Harkness had to be kidding, he could not really mean that he wanted to give her a job. But he did not look like he was kidding.

"Just think it over," he suggested with a shrug.

She frowned. Leon Vance would not accept her application and he knew her, he knew she was a good agent. To Harkness, she was little more than an acquaintance. Even if he had run a background check, something he must have done before even considering… "Why would you be willing to do this for me?" The last thing she wanted was somebody's pity.

"Because you're exactly the kind of person I need," he told her bluntly. Honestly. When Sir Alistair had called him yesterday to suggest that what Torchwood needed was an official liaison with UNIT, someone who knew both sides, the retired Brigadier had actually had Martha Jones Milligan in mind; he'd had several very good reasons why Jack should let her go back to New York. Out of the sort of respect that Jack showed very few people, he'd listened, grateful that Sir Alistair could outline his plan and his reasons with military efficiency, all the while his own mind churning with another possibility, one that solved multiple problems all at once, because really what could Eli David say if his daughter accepted a position with Torchwood? Jack could already see the Israeli Prime Minister gloating over having one of their own in what no sane person would consider a prestigious position—but Jack was of the opinion that there were very few sane people in politics. Between that and the letter Her Majesty had graciously consented to write endorsing Ziva for the newly created position, there would be nothing Eli could do—nothing the heads of UNIT could do, either, not with a man like Sir Alistair behind the idea. Retired or not, he still carried a lot of weight in UNIT.

"Ziva," Jack said to her, "you're perfect for this. You have a military background. You understand how the military works. And you're not the sort of person who's going to be intimidated by colonels and generals, _or_ by government bureaucrats. You speak what…six or seven languages?"

"Six fluently, three more well enough to get by," she admitted in a sheepish tone.

He merely nodded. "And most importantly, I know I can trust you."

She blinked.

"You're not the person you used to be. You quit Mossad. You turned your back on everything you knew—that took courage. It took courage to survive three weeks in that prison camp—"

"That was not courage. That was…it was something I had no control over. I survived because they let me survive. They made me survive. They…" she was shaking.

"I know."

"You cannot know."

"Yes, I can." He gathered her into his arms and let her shake. She wasn't crying, but she seemed to take comfort in being held. It was a good first step. He held her a long while before speaking again: "Ziva, listen to me. Your father isn't an good man. He left you there knowing exactly what was going to happen to you. He didn't even look for you. The people who actually care about you, your real family, are the ones who went looking for you—Abby didn't stop looking until she found you."

"I know."

He gave her a questioning look.

"I do know," she repeated. "I know… my father… he… he wants me to come back to Israel." It wasn't a question. She hadn't spoken to him in weeks, but knew how his mind worked. He wanted her back because she had survived Somalia, because she was a valuable asset. The fact that she was his daughter did not factor into it. It was only that last part that bothered her, especially after today, after watching Captain Harkness with his children, after talking to his daughter… _after everything that has happened to the world in the past year._ "You have spoken with him?" she asked. She suspected he had, it was the sort of thing she would do if she were in the Captain's position, but…

"Yes."

"What—what did he say?" she was almost afraid to ask, more afraid to hear the answer.

"Nothing you need to worry about. Even if you don't take the job. But I hope you do. Now come on," he said before she could respond. "Martha's waiting for us and I need to get home before supper if I'm going to get the desert I want," he raised his brows at her.

She smiled despite the tumult of emotions causing her gut to churn. "Pineapples and whipped cream?"

"Ianto's favourite," he grinned over at her.

She chuckled, she could not help it. Then, "Captain, if… if were to work for you, as a liaison to UNIT…where would I be stationed?" she asked him.

"Sir Alistair—Alistair Lethbridge Stewart, he's a retired brigadier and a very good friend of that guy I was telling you about before, the with the sports car—"

"The time traveller?"

"The Doctor."

"The Doctor?"

He just nodded and continued without explaining. "Sir Alistair thinks New York would be the ideal post for a liaison—I happen to agree. UNIT is based in Genève, but the New York office is just as big and Martha used to work there, so she can give you the lay of the land," he said, opening the door for her. The warehouse had undergone a lot of changes in the last few months. It was down right liveable. "Hello! Anybody home!" he hollered out a greeting.

"Jack!" Shane was the first person to him.

"Hey there, Kiddo," he couldn't help but gather the younger man up into a warm embrace.

"Careful Captain," Lois Habiba was just behind him. "Some people might consider that harassment."

"You've been talking to Ianto, haven't you?" he returned her grin with one of his own.

"Only every time I have a question," she told him. "Martha's waiting for you in her office."

"She has an office now?"

"Well… it passes for one… I'm Lois, by the way," she held her hand out to the woman standing next to the Captain.

"Ziva David," she introduced herself.

"Shane Bruster," the young Irishman was quick to hold out his hand as well; instead of shaking Ziva's hand, he kissed it.

"Watch it, Kid," Jack teased him. Then he turned to Ziva, "I'll be back in a minute."

"I will be fine," she told him. And for the first time in several very long days… perhaps even weeks, she felt as if it was the truth. She would be fine.

"So…?" Shane gave her a questioning look, just as soon as Jack was out of earshot.

"So?" Ziva returned his question with one of her own.

"Come on then, who are you?"

"Shane!" Lois swatted at his arm. "You never mind him, Ziva. Come on, I've just put on a pot of coffee—it's not Ianto's but it's not half bad, if I do say so myself."

Ziva smiled and followed her into the main area of their Hub, feeling herself relax just a little more. _Torchwood liaison to UNIT_… yes, thought, she was definitely going to be all right...


	12. Epilogue

**A/N:**

Once again, many thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed and a HUGE thank you to the brilliant Kitsa who helped with a lot of this story. It was her idea to have Jack make Ziva a much needed liaison to UNIT.

* * *

**Epilogue **

"_No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?"_

Elbert Hubbard

* * *

Jack got home later than he'd intended—but he was prepared to defend himself, he had _not _'swanned in' and taken over. Martha had _asked_ for his help on a couple of things. Then he'd introduced her to Ziva and let the two of them get to know each other a little (he shuddered to think what Martha might be telling the other woman about what it was like to work for him), while he took Shane out for a late lunch. His great grandson had a bad habit of forgetting to eat, especially when he got into something interesting at work. It was no wonder he was so skinny.

The Captain spent the rest of the afternoon and on into the early part of the evening giving Ziva an overview of Torchwood before leaving her with Sarah Jane and Luke Smith for the night. Tomorrow, Sarah Jane would drive her out to meet Sir Alistair, then Ziva would spend a few weeks training with Martha in London before coming back to him in Cardiff for a while, and eventually heading out to New York. Martha planned to go with her, just for a couple of days, to introduce her around to the people she used to work with, give her an idea of who she could trust. Sir Alistair had promised to check in with her as well, just to make sure nobody was giving her any trouble—Jack suspected that once the retired brigadier met Ziva David, he would worry less about her ability to handle herself.

Pulling up in front of his house after a long productive day, Jack was filled with the feeling of accomplishment. Satisfaction. Down right pleasure at the way things had turned out… except for the fact that he'd completely missed dinner with his family. Again. Still, once he got the chance to tell Ianto the whole story, he was (mostly) certain he would be forgiven. Just to be safe, he'd stopped by the florist shop on the way home. Ianto never stayed mad at him long when he came in bearing gifts. It was terribly cliché, but the younger man seemed to favour red roses. He'd had the girl at the shop mix in some baby's breath and pink carnations. He didn't suspect that his husband had any idea of flower meanings, but he knew what he was saying. _I will always love you. I will never forget you. _

"Don't forget to empty the bins," he mused aloud as he put his key in the door. Inside, the house was quiet and dark. Jack pulled off his boots and set them next to the door where they belonged; he shrugged out of his coat and hung it neatly on a hanger—

"Well there's a sign of a guilty conscious if ever I saw one," said a familiar Welsh voice in the dark. "Either that or the world is coming to an end," he added. "You never hang up your coat without me nagging at you."

He jumped, startled by the unexpected appearance of the younger man. He hadn't heard him creeping down the stair. "Sorry I'm late," he apologized, handing over the bouquet and hoping for the best. The other's expression was difficult to read, but he didn't sound very happy.

Ianto just shook his head and wrapped his arms around his husband's shoulders. "I wasn't honestly expecting you in until late, Cariad," he told him. He only let himself be held for a few moments before pulling away, gently, and taking the bouquet, heading into the kitchen with it. "You missed quite a day," he said over his shoulder in a deliberately casual tone.

"Oh?" Jack followed him, worry tingeing his voice. Ianto looked all right. He hadn't called—he would have called if someone was hurt…wouldn't he? "What happened?"

"You'd better sit down."

He swallowed hard, trying desperately to squash the rising panic that caused his chest to tighten. "Ianto—" if something had happened, he wanted to know. Sitting or standing, it wouldn't matter, if somebody was hurt or…worse…

The younger man regarded him a moment. As much as he wanted to make Jack squirm, he couldn't stand the look of fear in those gorgeous blue eyes. "Sit." He ordered. "Everything's fine," he added, but waited until his partner had put his butt in a chair to continue. "She wanted to tell you herself, but you didn't come in today—" he began.

Jack cut him off: "Who wanted to tell me what?"

"Well if you'd let me finish," he gave over a stern look—then poured water into a vase for the flowers and deliberately fussed with them for a few seconds while Jack stewed. "Abby's pregnant," he finally told him.

Jack blinked. Grinned. Grinned harder. Abby…Abby and Tim… "The rest of the team?" he asked, wondering how they'd taken it or if she'd even told them yet.

"Oh, they know," the other replied casually. He set the vase on the table and fussed for a few more seconds until he felt a pair of hands on his waist, tugging at him gently; he allowed Jack to draw him into his lap and wrapped his arms around the older man's shoulders. "You are the dead last person to find out," he couldn't help his grin. They all knew that Jack liked to be the first to know anything, even more so than him. "Bobby insisted on re-doing the blood work, despite the fact that Wendy assured him that she'd figured it out a week ago. Her scent changed," he answered the questioning look on his husband's face. "And of course you can imagine what Abby had to say when Bobby questioned her ability to do a simple blood test on her self."

"Do we need a new medic?" Jack asked him, grinning all the more.

The younger man chuckled, pulled in just a little closer. "He'll recover—although she did threaten to feed him to Myfanwy. Funny enough, Wendy offered to help."

Jack laughed. Tim and Abby were going to make great parents.

"I've already re-worked the schedule," Ianto told him, then. "It's going to be a bit tight, but Gwen said she'd come back early if we needed her." Her and Rhys' second child, a little girl, was due in a little over a month. She'd just gone on maternity leave, mostly to help Rhys out with RJ who seemed to be going through 'a phase'.

"We'll be fine," said the Captain. "We held it together with four people not so long ago, remember?"

He just shook his head. "Sometimes I'm not sure how did it, Jack. How you did it," he hadn't been much of a field agent in the beginning.

"It doesn't matter. We did it. We could do it again if we had to." _But I'm glad we don't. _There were so many things he was glad of…He looked up at the man sitting in his lap and thought about all the things he never wanted to forget. Those beautiful blue grey eyes. The turn of his nose. The way his hair always looked when he just got out of bed, mussed and out of place… the way he smiled just as he leant in. The softness of his lips…the way his tongue played gently at his mouth, seeking access… his body's reaction to his Welshman's kiss. "I love you," he whispered as their mouths parted.

"I love you too, Jack. With all my heart. Oh…and I saved you some dessert," he added with a wicked little grin. "It's upstairs." He slid out of his husband's lap and took his hand hand, giving it a gentle tug to bring him to his feet.

"Pineapples and whipped cream?"

"You know they're my favourite… and you, Sir, are the sexiest plate I have ever eaten off of."

With an offer like that, Jack didn't have to be asked twice…


End file.
